A NATION HONOURS ITS WAR VETERANS
Calgarians share their stories of remembrance
Beneath Union Jack and Maple Leaf flags, Rev. Robert Greene lent some levity to the memorial service for a peacetime veteran.
The funeral is one of many the Anglican priest has conducted as the ranks of Calgary’s older military veterans thin with time.
But as he enjoys refreshments at the Royal Canadian Legion’s Chapelhow branch, the 93-yearold recalls how that grim roll call violently began more than seven decades ago amid the maelstrom of war in Italy.
He’d traded places with a colleague in a Sherman tank called Bluebell for another dubbed Bishop — a move that saved his life.
“A German 88-mm shell killed everyone in the turret,” recalls a whip-sharp Greene, who was a wireless operator.
“My successor was taken out in a shoebox.”
Greene figures fate helped him cheat death three other times during the war, something that drove him to religion. “It caused me to think — when I was spared for much better guys who were killed — that I had a purpose,” he says. “It’s what got me to study for the holy orders.”
His first break came when he was rejected on physical grounds for a place in the air force.
Another time, a hospital stay during the Italian campaign spared him from a German attack that would have killed him, says Greene.
That echoed another incident when his Lord Strathcona’s Horse (Royal Canadians) prepared to storm the enemy’s Gothic Line.
“A mortar fell into a slit trench right at the spot I was at a few moments before, and killed both of these infantrymen,” he says.
Greene recalls the time the Canadians came up against a Tiger tank that had helped decimate their numbers that day.
But a lucky hit disabled the hulking panzer’s gun, dooming it, he added.
“Otherwise, we’d be dead ... every day now is a blessing,” he says.
Later, the Strathconas were pulled out of Italy and sent to liberate the Netherlands as the war wound down.
There, after bouts of more heavy fighting, they were mobbed by jubilant Dutch townsfolk celebrating their arrival.
“They sang their national anthem, something that could have them shot a few days earlier — there was barely a dry eye,” he says.
“That was the payoff for all the tough times we had in Italy.”
If Greene has any debt or obligation to those who fell in his place, he’s been paying it during the weeks leading up to Remembrance Day.
He thumbs through a schedule book crammed with appearances and discussions that bring back a flood of memories — many of them delivered to grade-school audiences.
Some mornings, he can be found at the Kensington Legion, filling in historical gaps.
“I love it, I’m blessed,” says Greene.