Father ‘so young’ at Vimy, oilman Gray says
Some things are better left unsaid as painful memories are put aside.
That was how many young men who fought at Vimy Ridge chose to deal with that experience, if they were fortunate to make it home.
Ken Gray was one such soldier. He fought in France as an 18-year-old lance corporal with the Montreal Regiment. As a signaller, he put down wire, so Canadian soldiers would have decent communications. The German gunners would target such men, knowing the vital role they played.
Today his son, Calgary oilman Jim Gray, wonders what it must have felt like for a young man from Coldwater, Ont., to see such ferocious fighting.
His dad never talked much about the battle or the First World War.
“He was very reluctant to talk about his wartime experiences,” said Gray. “I think those men didn’t want to open up old wounds — it was behind them and they wanted to leave it behind them. It had healed over and they didn’t want to go and interfere with it again.”
When he thinks about his father’s service, what strikes Gray is how young his dad was. “He was so very young when he was in that battle. Really he was just a boy.
“It was his first major battle. He was one of those guys who ran up stringing wire. Of course, the artillery with their surface blasts were designed to break that wire, to disrupt communications, so then they had to lay it again a second, third and fourth time.”
Ken Gray never returned to Vimy, but his son has visited the impressive monument to the Canadian fallen on the ridge. It made him proud then and it still does today.
“Yes, I visited several years ago. We figured out to a close tolerance where my father went up that ridge,” said Gray, who’ll spend time on the anniversary reflecting about Vimy and his dad, who died of a stroke at age 75 in 1973.
“It really was the birth of a country. It’s a day to be remembered and I hope we do it well. I am sure we will.”