Due to the numerous Remembrance Day ceremonies that will be held in Flinton, at Pine Meadow Nursing Home and the local school, and as they will all be led by Rev. Padre Bruce Kellar with the participation of members of the Northbrook Legion, the Denbigh Remembrance Day service was held early, on November 2. The ceremony took place at the Denbigh cenotaph located at the Denbigh United Church and it attracted close to 30 members of the local community.

Rev. Padre Kellar led the service, which included members of the Northbrook Legion, Cecil Hawley, Sergeant-at-Arms Ernie Ballar, Mike Powley Junior, Harry Andringa, Wayne Marsh and Robert Wood. Rev. Padre Kellar began the service by speaking about the tragic events that took place over two weeks ago in Ottawa and Quebec, in which two members of the Canadian Forces were killed. He said, “We are able to stand on this free ground because of the men and women who have put their lives in jeopardy.” He prayed for those who have been lost and for those who have lost loved ones and who continue to experience suffering and pain because of that loss.

Twelve wreaths were laid by various members of the community including members of the Addington Highlands and North Frontenac councils. Following the ceremony attendees gathered to share a meal.

Bob Taylor runs a fresh fruit and vegetable stand in Northbrook during the summer and fall these days, but he has done a lot of other things, and is known for the years during which he was associated with ambulance service in the northern half of Lennox and Addington County.

Less well known is his connection to WW2. Bob was born at the end of June in 1943, near the town of Stirling, a long way from the war, but that war had already taken a toll on him. His father, Robert Taylor, died in a plane crash during a training run near Scredington, England, on June 18, 1943, one week before Bob was born

Bob was raised by his grandparents, as his mother was working when he was young and eventually re-married. “My grandparents were wonderful and always kind and helpful to me, so I have no complaints about that,” he said. Although he was sent to New Brunswick, where his father's family was from, at about six years old, Bob had already made attachments in Ontario and he soon returned.

His grandmother died in 1955, and he stayed with his grandfather through his teenage years.

Although he knew of the circumstances of his father's death, it wasn't until last year that he visited Scredington, where the accident took place, to participate in a ceremony in a 13th Century church in which a plaque was dedicated.

“It was pretty overwhelming visiting the site, participating in the commemoration, and being treated as if I was royalty the whole time,” he said.

As part of the events, there was a flypast of one of the few remaining Lancaster Bombers, the same plane that went down on that June day in 1943.

Nine soldiers were in that plane, two more than a normal complement. Flight Sergeant Robert Taylor was the rear gunner with a new crew, and because it was a training mission he was basically along for the ride on the flight but, all crew members participated in training missions.

He had survived 50 bombing missions over enemy territory, a rare feat in itself (22743 soldiers died in combat missions flying in Lancaster bombers between 1942 and 1944 and 44% of the fleet ended up going down) He was in training in a plane that was set to be a Pathfinder, planes that flew just above treetops and lit up targets for bombing missions.

According to his son, because the anti-aircraft guns were trained on the bombers, the chances of survival in a Pathfinder were significantly better.

“He likely would have survived the war as a Pathfinder, but that was not to be,” said Bob Taylor.

By remaining in contact with his New Brunswick grandparents, uncles and aunts, Taylor learned some details about his father.

“My grandfather was renowned as a hard-working man, He built a very successful dairy farm, but my grandmother was much more social. Apparently my father took after his mother. He had a rare skill. He could smell a day’s work and disappear like a Houdini,” he said.

While he was in England for the ceremony, it brought some of the physical reality of his father's last day home to him, and he even brought a souvenir, of sorts, back to Northbrook.

“Someone pulled up a piece of twisted metal from the ground near the crash site. The paint on the bottom was the same as the non-reflective black paint on the bottom of the Lancasters, so it only makes sense that it was from the plane,” he said.

The metal is attached to a plaque to his father that Taylor brought home from England.

He is currently working on a book about his father's life and death.

Cutline

Bob Taylor holding a plaque to his father that was presented to him in England.

This year marks the 100th anniversary of the start of the First World War, and also the 120th anniversary of our organization, the Family & Children’s Services of Frontenac, Lennox and Addington (formerly the Children’s Aid Society). For this Remembrance Day we decided to do something different - tell the story of one soldier from our area who went to what they called the Great War, and never came back.

The result is a series of videos, images and information on Captain Stanley Cunningham, MC of Kingston. We call it “Soldier of the Great War”.

Cunningham wasn’t that much different from any of us. He lived on Union Street. He went to Kingston Collegiate and graduated from Queen’s University. He joined the 21st Battalion when the war started and was killed just 75 days before it ended. Today, he rests in a war cemetery in France. And his name is on the Memorial Wall at the Kingston Memorial Centre.

This Remembrance Day, join us in remembering his life and his sacrifice. Watch the videos. Share them on social media with your family and friends. Help us bring him home after more than a hundred years by remembering him and all Canada’s war dead. View

www.RememberKFLA.ca for videos, images, information, and links. - submitted by the FACSFLA

Special guests at NAEC’s Remembrance Day assembly was a visiting group of paratroopers from Mike Company, 3rd Battalion, Royal Canadian Regiment, based at CFB Petawawa. The assembly featured several students. Breanna Tryon and Cassandra Parks-Delyea were the emcees. Ms. Buck’s Grade 5/6 class recited “In Flanders Field”, and Sierra Baldacchin, Camille Cote and Madi Lessard recited it in French. Mrs. Fuller’s Grade 1 class sang “It’s a Small World”, and Mrs. Snider’s Kindergarten class recited a poem called “Poppy, poppy”.

Sgt. Cornish introduced the paratroopers to the assembly, and a short video outlined the history of the Canadian Armed Forces. As in previous years, the visiting paratroopers ate lunch with the secondary and elementary students, played with them, and visited classes to talk to them about life in the Armed Forces. Students had a variety of questions prepared for the visitors, ranging from personal interests to skills needed in the Armed Forces. As well as chatting with students about life in the forces, the visitors also watched Ms. Buck and Ms. Cuthill's classes performing a "cup song", which involved a coordinated, rhythmic performance in which students clapped and banged cups on the floor.

Youtube interview of Bill Robinson here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbItySUOAT0

The battle for Hill 187 resulted in the deaths of 26 Canadian soldiers. Twenty-seven more were injured and seven were taken prisoners. It was the worst engagement of the entire war for the Royal Canadian Regiment. The losses were suffered by the regiment's newly arrived Third Battalion, whose numbers were beefed up with soldiers from other regiments who had not yet served enough time to be sent home.

According to an account of the battle in the Korea Veterans Association website, this particular battle has ever received its due, a forgotten battle from Canada's forgotten war.

“This unfortunate tragedy, the Battle of Hill 187 – which should be an unforgettable incident in the Korean War - was not even properly reported in Canadian newspapers. Censors in Korea wanted to keep the enormity of the losses covered up during the last months of the peace talks,” (Korean Veterans Association Newsletter, May 3, 2011)

One of the soldiers who were wounded at the Battle of Hill 187 was Bill Robinson, who is well known locally as the long-serving, sometimes combative, Portland District councilor in the South Frontenac Council.

On May 2, 1953, Bill Robinson was one of the soldiers in the trenches during the Battle of Hill 187. Although most of the soldiers in his regiment had only arrived in Korea weeks earlier, he had already been fighting for eight months and had been assigned to reinforce the under-manned Third Battalion of the Royal Canadians.

The attack was the fiercest he ever experienced in Korea. At one point a shell blast hit in the corner of his trench, sending him flying. He suffered a concussion and an injury to his ear, and he has never recovered his hearing in that ear.

The battle itself raged on for two days. The account published by the Korean War Veteran Association describes in some detail how the Third Battalion was under-manned and, in the writer's view, unnecessarily exposed to enemy fire at the time. And the battle has never been talked about very much in the intervening 60 years.

“How must this horrid battle have haunted the hearts and the minds of those caught up in it? Not just for weeks of months or even years, but for decades?

“There were no definitive news reports about this battle. There was a terribly inept article, diced and scratched by censors, that appeared in a few Canadian papers two months later. It told no story; only gave an impression that a company of the newly arrived Royal Canadian Regiment had been attacked.

Through the years, tales told by those who were there on the night of May 2/3, 1953 have fallen on deaf ears. Those willing to talk about it finally gave up and went silent. Nobody was interested. Anyone with vague interest believed the war had pretty much ended long before the spring of 1953 and those on the ground in Korea were mostly a symbolic force, not actually fighting. So the story of the brave 3rd Royals who fought their enemy in pitched battle soon after arriving in Korea, is not only forgotten; it was not even told.” (KVA newsletter, May 3, 2011)

As for Bill Robinson, the war did not end after the Battle of Hill 187. Rather than being sent back home, he continued on in Korea until the end of the war.

“A doctor cleaned the blood out of my ear and said I was ok. It was only after that I found out he was a psychiatrist, not an MD.”

He remained with the battalion, and on patrol, for four more months. On July 27, 1953, when the fighting ended, Robinson said his battalion only found out on the morning that the armistice had been signed. But the peace did not take effect until after midnight, and the Chinese fighters kept firing all day and all night. “That was a long patrol, none of us wanted to go down on the last day before the whole thing was going to be over,” he said.

Bill was 18 when he joined the army in Kingston in 1952.

“It was just an adventure in my mind at the time,” he said.

Sixty years after the end of the Korean War, as Bill Robinson laid a wreath at the Sydenham Cenotaph on behalf of Korean War veterans for the 38th time, and joined the procession of veterans who pinned their poppy to a wreath at the end of the ceremony, Bill said he still remembers “all the bad parts of the war; all the memories are still there, and they come back from time to time, when there is a sudden noise, something like that.”

Bill remained in the military until 1969. By that time he was well qualified as a lineman and could have worked for Bell or Hydro, but neither were interested in taking on his military pension, so he worked for the prison service in various capacities until he retired in 1988.

He worked for his wife, who held the management contract at the Verona waste site, until recently.

He has served on South Frontenac Council as the Portland Rep since amalgamation in 1998.

On November 11, Peter Brugmans' eyes welled up with tears at the Sharbot Lake Legion following the Remembrance Day service at the Soldiers Memorial Hall. Brugmans and his wife Marion just recently sold their house on Bobs Lake and will be moving to Collingwood in order to be closer to their three children and two grand children. The tears he said are the result of looking both back and forward; back in remembrance of those he has loved and lost, and to this community of people who have become almost family to him and whom he will soon be leaving. “When we moved here we thought that it would be our last move. But that changed since we have found it increasingly hard to get together with our children and grandchildren and often only see them once or twice a year. That and the fact that I am getting older is the reason that we have decided to move closer to them”, Brugmans said.

He was born in Holland in 1936 and moved with Marion to Bobs Lake in 1995. He joined the Sharbot Lake Legion as an associate member at that time, and since then he has made some very close friends in the community as a Legion member, as a volunteer at Northern Frontenac Community Services, as a member of the Bedford Catholic church and as a volunteer with the OPP's Cottage Watch program.

Brugmans said that the last few weeks have been especially emotional for him both due to the upcoming move and also because of the feelings that Remembrance Day always brings. Brugmans spoke about his father, who fought in the Dutch Army and later in the British Infantry. In between those services his father, who at the time was already married with three sons, was picked up by the Germans and went to work in a German munitions factory until, when granted one week's leave, he left the factory never to return. Instead, he went underground, assisting people fleeing the Germans. Peter recalled his father hiding one Canadian paratrooper named Jim O'Brien in the attic of the family home in St. Oedenrode, Holland.

In 1952 Brugmans' family moved to Canada, first to a farm in Manitoba, where his father worked, and later to Athens, Ontario. They would finally settle in Morrisburg, and it was there that a long-time neighbor recognized the picture of the paratrooper, Jim O'Brien, which led to the family having a chance to meet him again.

Brugmans and his father worked together helping to construct the St. Lawrence Seaway but his father unfortunately died of cancer in 1957. "It was sad because things were just starting to pick up for the family before he passed away,” Brugmans said.

He continued to work at the seaway until 1961 and then married his wife Marion. Together they had a family of their own and it is that family that they now feel needs their attention most. And so on November 20, Peter and Marion will be saying their final good byes to the members of the community, whom they have come to know and love over the last two decades. “It's hard to leave and say goodbye because we have made so many good friends here but we hope that we will be back to visit soon.” Peter said that he plans to join the Legion in Collingwood soon after his arrival there.

Veterans and their families were honored at the annual Veterans' Dinner at the Sharbot Lake Legion on November 2. The many veterans honored included Don Antoine and Norman Garneys, who both served in the Second World War; Al Hardyman and Lloyd Arnold, who served in the Korean War; Dave Whalen and Jeff Donelly, who served in Bosnia; and other veterans who served either in peace time and/or were available to be called for duty during war time service.

Legion Vice President Jeff Donelly had the honor of emceeing the event and was joined at the head table by Legion President Dave Whalen and his wife Kathleen White, past president Patty Middleton, guest speaker Warrant Officer (WO) Joe Kiah and Legion Padre James Barnett. Sorely missed were Art Goodfellow and Ken Hollywood, both Second World War veterans who passed away this past year.

WO Joe Kiah has had a long, varied and successful career in the Canadian Forces. He rose at a very young age to become a Master Corporal and in 1988/89 was awarded the Special Service Force Soldier of the Year award. He spoke following the roast beef dinner. Kiah, who was later promoted to the rank of Sergeant and to WO, completed a UN Tour of Cyprus and a tour in Bosnia and also participated in Operation Persistence, the recovery of Swiss Air Flight 111. In 2002 he was posted to the RCR Battle School as an instructor and held positions both as a section commander and platoon WO. Currently Kiah serves as the WO at 8 Wing Trenton.

He spoke of his long career and his dedication to the forces and to the soldiers he has both taught and lost. Most moving were his words about repatriating four Canadian solders and one reporter killed in Afghanistan. “One of the saddest points for me was attending the funeral of one of the soldiers I taught,” Kiah said, “and getting a big hug from his mother and a big hand shake from his father at the funeral because they knew we did what we could. That's the way the forces work. We do what we can with what we have to the best of our ability.”

Following the dinner Legion President Dave Whalen spoke to me about Art Goodfellow and Ken Hollywood, who were both “good friends and role models” to Whalen. “When I looked out tonight and realized again that they were not here it always leaves a hole in my heart. Both those men were true heroes and my role models and they are both sorely missed.” Whalen also brought the point home when he said, “This night is not about glorifying war. Trust me, as a ex-soldier I hate war. This night is about honoring the men who went when their country called.”

Photo: WWll veteran Ted Lansdell lays a wreath in Sydenham

Hundreds gathered for the Remembrance Day Service held at the cenotaph in Sydenham led by Captain, the Reverend Judson Bridgewater, the Sydenham Legion’s Padre.

In a moving address Padre Bridgewater spoke of the difficulty of trying to “make sense of the hell we call war, where we tread a fine line between honoring our heroes and trying to avoid glorifying war. It's a difficult balancing act between condemning and condoning,” he said. He spoke of the confusion Remembrance Day can bring for all and the need in this war-torn world to avoid becoming cynical and indifferent. “How do you and I not give up on this world where people continue to suffer and where war continues despite the sacrifices made by so many. In a word, it’s hope, and it is my sincere hope that one day peace and love will prevail.”

Fraser Strong played the Last Post and Reveille and John Pickernell, president of the Sydenham Legion, read an address from Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Haley Caird gave an emotional reading of the poem “In Flanders Fields” followed by various members of the community who were invited by Valerie Ruttan to place wreaths.

One distinguished wreath layer was Verona resident and WWll veteran Ted Lansdell who, at 92 years of age, is the oldest veteran at Sydenham Legion.

Ted grew up in London, Ontario, where he received his army training. He served for five years in WWll, from 1940-1945. Two of those years were served in combat in the 1st Division of the Canadian Armed Forces, in postings in Italy, France, Belgium, Germany and North Africa.

Ted joined the army at the age of 21 in 1940 and served as a Mechanist Sergeant Major. He gave advanced workshops in repairing vehicles that were damaged in battle, usually by land mines. That work, he said, often put himself and his comrades in harm’s way. “We worked as close to the front as we could and would often set up the workshops that consisted of blacksmiths, carpenters - all of the trades - in locations pretty close to the front lines.”

In one instance in southern Italy in 1943, Lansdell recalled his troops working “with the German guns firing over our heads one way and our guns coming the other way and we being set up right there in the middle.” At one time he came to harm when shrapnel sprayed him in the chest. He recalled, “It didn't do too much damage though. It just hit the breast bone and they took me to the hospital, put me under and took it out.”

That being said, working so close to the front did take some getting used to. “The gunfire would go on all night and somehow you just got used to it and somehow we learned how to sleep with that going on around us,” Ted said. He also remembered sleeping under the olive trees in Italy with just a sleeping bag and a ground sheet and having to clear away the salamanders and scorpions before bedding down for the night.

Lansdell was in Holland when the war finally came to an end in 1945. He returned to Canada where he got a job as a mechanic and married his wife Irene in 1948. The couple moved to Verona in 1952 when Ted and a partner bought a dealership and opened Verona Motors Ltd. He and his wife had three children.

What does Ted take away from his war experience? “The memories are good and bad. It goes both ways. I saw a few dead bodies on the battlefield but it seems to me that when you're young you don't get as bothered by stuff. It's later when you get older that you tend to think of it differently.”

Asked about his feelings about war in general, he replied, “Unfortunately I think that we will always have war and rumors of war in some form or another.”

Remembrance Ceremonies in the Region

Top: The legion Colour Guard in Arden

Left: Sergeant Jordana Sproule visited Clarendon Central Public Scholl and brought along her grandmother Barb Sroule. Photo courtesy Rhona Watkins

Top Left: Land O'Lakes Publid School students presenting gifts for Armed Forces members after the Moountain Grove ceremony

Top Right: Student cadets assist with the North Addidngton Education Centre Remembrance Day assembly. Photo: Kayla Cuddy.

Right: Members of the Sharbot Lake High School Glee Club performed their version of John Lennon's song "Imagine".

There will be one less old warrior in Sharbot Lake next November 11.

Ken Hollywood was more than a fixture at the Sharbot Lake Legion, and when it came time to mark Remembrance Day his medals covered both sides of his chest. However, those medals don't tell the whole story of his service in some of the most dangerous battles of the Second World War, starting with the landing on Juno Beach on D-Day.

Ken Hollywood was working in a gold mine near Timmins when he was called up in 1942, and by the time he landed with his comrades on the Normandy coast he was an anti tank-commander.

Although Ken was loathe to discuss the details of his war service when he was alive, Dave Whalen of his Legion branch gave this account at a memorial service for him at the Legion on Feb. 2:

“The battle of the Falaise Pocket, fought during the Second World War from 12 August 1944, was the decisive engagement of the Battle of Normandy. The battle resulted in the destruction of the bulk of Germany's forces west of the River Seine and opened the way to Paris and the German border. In those days anti-tank weapons were short range. If the guns did not succeed in first shot kill, their position would be given away and tanks, which hunt in groups of a minimum of four, would then open fire on them. As a result Ken lost three gun crews, 18 men, in support of the third Canadian Infantry Division in France.

Twice during these intense battles, his wife, Ada, whom he affectionately called Babe, received telegrams saying he was dead. After the first telegram proved false, Ada says, she doubted the second telegram, sent after Ken was struck in the head by a bullet.

She finally received a hand-written note saying, “I am alive and well, luv, Ken.”

She never found out until later the extent of Ken’s injuries and how close he came to death. He spent almost two years in hospital after undergoing plastic surgery and convalescence.

Ken lost a brother, Herb, in the Italian campaign and two uncles in the Great War, the First World War.”

During his long life, Ken Holywood witnessed a lot of changes from his perch at the Hollywood farm, which is located across Road 38 from St. Georges Lake. He was one of 14 children in the Hollywood family, and attended school just down from where the Hollywood farm is located today, in a schoolhouse located on the property where Nick and Jocelyn Whalen of Sharbot Lake Pharmacy now live.

He married Ada May Stevenson in 1939 and they moved to Timmins and had two children, Charlotte and Lorne.

After the war, Ken returned to Timmins and the couple had a second son, Rudy.

When Ken's father Thomas decided to retire from farming in 1952, Ken agreed to take on the farm and the family moved back to Sharbot Lake. He worked at Mallard Electric in Perth in addition to keeping up the farm, until his eyesight, badly affected by a bullet in the war, eventually became too poor to keep working out. He stuck with farming after that.

His marriage with Ada lasted for almost 70 years until Ada died in 2008. He continued living in the farmhouse where he was born until last November, when he moved to Country View Care Home in Parham.

Legion Branch 425, the Hollowood Legion (which is named after him despite the spelling error) will never be the same.