VICTORIA CROSS
Sask. war hero’s medal will stay in Canada
One of the most significant Victoria Crosses in Canadian history will stay in Canada.
The medal, the Commonwealth’s highest honour for valour in the face of the enemy, was awarded to Lt.-Col. David Vivian Currie for his role in the bloody fighting in the Falaise Pocket after D -Day.
A foreign collector bought Currie’s VC at a private auction in London, England, last September for $660,000, including a $110,000 auction house fee.
But because the medal was considered “of outstanding cultural significance and national importance,” Canadians were given a six-month grace period to top the foreign offer. The war museum stepped up, bolstered by contributions from the North Saskatchewan Regiment, Currie’s unit, the museum’s donor-supported National Collection Fund, the federal government and private citizens.
On hand for the unveiling were Currie’s three grandchildren, David, Sandy and Brenda. They remember their grandfather as a kind family man, who loved to mow the lawn, smoke his pipe and drive his grandkids to and from lessons. He rarely spoke about the war.
“He never talked about it,” said Brenda, who came from Powell River, B.C., for the event.
“He said that he went, he did his job and he came home. We knew it was something special, but to us, he was just our grandfather.”
Brenda Currie said her grandfather considered the medal “every soldier’s VC.”
Currie, a native of Sutherland, Sask., was one of only 16 Canadians awarded the VC during the Second World War. His was the only VC earned in the brutal fighting in Normandy during summer 1944.
Currie, then a major, and his small group of tanks and infantry were tasked with sealing the Germans’ only exit from the village of St. Lambert-sur-Dives. Over the course of the 36-hour battle, Currie’s force inflicted 800 casualties, destroyed seven tanks and took 2,100 prisoners. Currie’s men took heavy casualties, too. Every other officer in his command was killed or wounded. Currie himself slept for only one hour during the entire battle.
A famous photograph shows Currie, pistol in hand, alongside a long line of German prisoners of war. Historian C.P. Stacey said the photo was “as close as we are ever likely to come to a photograph of a man winning the Victoria Cross.”