JACK KNOX:
Best friends receive posthumous medals
The day after Ross Williams was born, his father went to war, never to come back. So the Oak Bay man was grateful this year when Harry Williams Lane was dedicated in the Belgian town in which the Victoria soldier was killed
Ross Williams was born July 3, 1942, in Royal Jubilee Hospital. His dad, Horace (Harry) Williams, saw his newborn son that day, then headed off to war the next — never to return.
That’s it. That’s all the time father and son spent together. “The day I was born,” Ross said.
So, yes, it meant a great deal to the Oak Bay man to travel to Belgium this spring to see a street named in his father’s honour.
“It was very emotional,” the 73-year-old said Tuesday.
It was also a reminder that the veterans aren’t the only ones to think about on Remembrance Day. There are also those they left behind.
Harry Williams was raised on Victoria’s Market Street. He married wife Gwendolyn in 1937, then, like many other Vancouver Island men, signed on with the Canadian Scottish Regiment in 1940. He got to come home on leave when Ross, their only child, was born, but then it was back to training and, a short time later, Europe.
Having transferred to the South Saskatchewan Regiment, Maj. Williams was a company commander by the Battle of Lochtenberg, when the Canadians tried to force a crossing of the AntwerpTurnhout Canal near Antwerp, Belgium, on Sept. 24, 1944.
Williams’s death was witnessed by an 18-year-old signalman, Charles (Chic) Goodman, who told the story to the Times Colonist’s Sandra McCulloch in 2008.
As the company entered the town of Brecht, an inexperienced officer led his platoon down a street without checking to ensure its houses were clear of the enemy. “He was walking into a trap — it was his first battle,” said Goodman, who lives on the Saanich Peninsula.
Williams, suspecting an ambush, leapt up to stop the men from going forward.
As radioman, it was Goodman’s job to stick with his company commander. “Maj. Williams ran forward and I got up to follow him because that’s where I was supposed to be. He saved my life with four words: ‘No, you stay here.’ ”
Goodman stayed back, only to see a German tank emerge from a side street and machine gun the leading Canadian soldiers, including Williams.
“Just about everybody in that forward platoon was killed or captured,” Goodman told McCulloch. “I was not hurt. I was able to help the last surviving officer, a lieutenant from Vancouver, and we managed to withdraw.”
Just like that, another young Canadian — one of 44,000 killed in the Second World War — was gone, leaving a wife and two-yearold son behind in Victoria.
“She struggled,” Ross said of his mother. “She also lost her brother.”
Joe Addison, well known as a runner who competed in the 1934 British Empire Games in London, died after his bomber was attacked over the Netherlands. Ross was instrumental in getting his uncle inducted into the Greater Victoria Sports Hall of Fame two years ago.
It was Goodman who, having retired to Victoria, tracked down Ross a decade or so ago and told him the story of how his father died. “We’ve been great friends ever since,” Ross said.
It was also Goodman who linked Ross to Wally Schoofs in Belgium.
Schoofs, a teacher in his 30s, is also a local historian in Brecht — but his connection to this story goes beyond that. His own grandparents took it upon themselves to tend Harry Williams’s roadside grave outside their home for many years until the Canadian’s remains were transferred to a military cemetery in the Netherlands.
Schoofs himself was one of those behind the campaign to name a street after the fallen officer. He also hosted Ross when the Oak Bay man made the long trip to Belgium this spring. On a rainy day this May, with a drummer and a pair of pipers adding to the atmosphere, Ross witnessed the dedication of Harry Williams Lane, just around the corner from where his father gave his life.
Seeing the gratitude the Belgians felt toward the wartime Canadians was rewarding to a man whose dad — a dad he never got to know — had died on their behalf.
The families of two long-dead Second World War naval veterans are grateful recipients of service recognition from the Canadian government.
William (Bill) Arthur Jackman has been awarded the War Medal, 1939-1945, while Alfred Adamson was granted the Arctic Star, which recognizes naval war service north of the Arctic Circle, mostly in convoys assisting the Soviet Union, then under siege by the Nazis.
“It’s something to show he was in the navy,” said Lorna Jackman of the medal awarded to her late husband. “I only wish he could have been here to get it himself.”
The two men were best friends who grew up in Victoria and sailed off with the merchant navy before the war and ended up getting sucked into the conflict.
After the war, they joined the Victoria Fire Department, with Adamson rising to deputy chief.
Jackman died in 1969 and Adamson died in 1997.
It was a fire department chum, Richard (Dick) Austin, who took it upon himself to chase down the men’s war service records.
Austin believed both men might qualify for the Arctic Star and applied on their behalf.
Veterans Affairs, however, sent the different medals with letters explaining service records indicate they were the ones to which the two men are entitled.
Both families are grateful for the recognition.
For Donna Craig, Adamson’s daughter, it’s a physical memento to pass along to her father’s grandchildren, a reminder of his service.
It’s especially important because neither Adamson nor Jackman talked much about their war service, and there are few stories to pass along.
Craig said relatives of other deceased veterans should not hesitate about applying.
“Maybe there are other medals that people should get,” she said. “Government doesn’t just give you something unless you ask.”