Updates – Real War Canada

The tin hat story

Arkle Dunlop began researching the story of this particular tin hat not long after a visit to France in 1984, and a tour of the battlefields where his division had been charged with holding back the German Armoured Panzer divisions in the summer of 1944.

That newspaper photo is from a talk he gave to the Royal Canadian Legion of Hanover, Ontario, in November 1985; and the following account is from the script he sent to Jim Dolmage of the speech he gave at the Lincoln and Welland Regiment’s October 1998 reunion in St. Catharines.

The First and Second World Wars had some things in common: we fought the Germans, in the Low Countries of Europe, and we wore a tin hat.

The one issued to most of the infantry was the British Army issue: wide brim, low crown, held on your head by a strap under your chin that was connected to the helmet above each ear. Inside the helmet was a leather saddle, which had an air space of perhaps one-half inch on all sides around it, and was attached to the helmet by a rivet at the top. Hats and saddles were of universal size, but the saddle had lacing at the back that could be tightened for anyone with a small pointed head (like some sergeants I knew). I know this equipment quite well; I wore one continuously from July 1944 to May 1945.

The Argylls in Tilly

Black Yesterdays: The Argylls’ War—a brilliant book by Robert L. Fraser, PhD—is a narrative of the Canadian soldiers in Europe who served with the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. The entries are all first-hand recollections of the men in the battles woven together with the official War Diary.

The Argylls came in to relieve the Lincoln and Welland Regiment, and would endure the same terrible punishment for several days of being commanded to send small groups of soldiers against a massed German army with tanks and heavy artillery in place. This was a strategy of the High Command to keep the large German force in place so they wouldn’t move south and battle against the American troops who weren’t as advanced as the Canadians. Our troops were sacrificed to protect the Americans.

The following excerpts, from pages 211-222 of Black Yesterdays, document that experience in Tilly, in the words of the men who fought there.

Ernie Phair and the Sharp family

A close reading of the dedication in The Night in Tilly Field may have left you wondering how my uncle, Ernie Phair, came to have a different last name from his brother Alvin Sharp. And so, here is that story.

Thomas and Nettie Sharp on their wedding day, December 22, 1908

Ernest George Sharp was born on March 28, 1913, the younger brother of Marguerite Etoile Sharp (born in 1909) and Alvin Kay Sharp (born in 1911.) Two weeks later, his mother (my grandmother) Nettie Sharp died.

My grandfather, Thomas Sharp, was left with two small children and a new baby to care for. Thomas was a carpenter and a blacksmith, who had shops in Hensall and later Seaforth, Ontario. However, when winter came, he would travel north to more lucrative work in the lumber camps, where he would live from November until April, leaving the children with Nettie.

Until Thomas remarried—three years later after Nettie’s death—his siblings looked after Marguerite and Alvin, while Thomas travelled for work; and the baby, Ernie, was placed in the care of the welcoming Phair family in Watford, Ontario, who had no children.

By 1917, Thomas Sharp had remarried and moved away from Watford with his new wife and his two older children. They eventually settled in Seaforth, where two more children were added to the family. In those days, the travel between Watford and Seaforth was difficult, and so the Phairs and the Sharps lost contact, and young Ernie grew up not even knowing he had any siblings.

Lieutenant Ernie Phair somewhere in England, Spring/Summer 1944

Still, while Ernie was raised by the Phairs, his father never allowed him to be formally adopted, so, when he signed up for the army in 1940, he discovered his true birth name and took his wife Donalda and their daughter Ann to reconnect with his siblings and their families—the Sharps and the Dolmages—not long before he headed off to war.

My Mother kept a picture of Ernie in our living room. All she knew about Ernie dying in the war was that it had happened near Caen. Neither she nor Ernie’s family knew any details.

When news came that Ernie had been declared missing, his army pay was cut off, and Mutual Life would not pay his life insurance policy, and Donalda and Ann had to stay with our family in Kitchener for several weeks. It wasn’t until a year later, when the POWs were released and came home to confirm that Ernie had indeed been killed in battle, that his back pay was released to his family.

Ernie Phair’s war story told in new comic book novel

By Mark Clairmont / Muskoka Today

Today’s war stories are live by the hour on TV—gruesome and graphic as ever. In 1944, during the battle of Normandy, news from the French front was slower returning home than progress marching forward.

Eighty-two years later, a heroic and tragic story has surfaced in a personalized tale written and published—in comic book form—by Jim Dolmage, a former gym teacher at Gravenhurst High School.

The Night in Tilly’s Field is a graphic novel about his uncle Lt. Ernie Phair and “the men I interviewed who were on the battlefield and witnessed his death.”

The intended audience is teenagers to inform them specifically about the Second World War; but also about wars in general, he says. You don’t need to buy the book “I’m offering it free on line.”

➤ Read the full article

The key

I interviewed Murray Reid in August of 2004, at his home in Wheatley, Ontario. It was Bert Hearnden who had told me the story about the Key. Three of them—the Guy from Calgary, Bert Hearnden, and Murray—had just crossed the French border in a car they had liberated from a German officer. There, they were stopped by French police, who commanded them to get out of the vehicle. They were forced to leave on foot, but Murray kept the key; and Bert told me how much they’d laughed when they looked back from several hundred yards down the road and saw the Gendarmes trying to figure out how to start the car.

Corporal John MacLean’s story

The anonymous note that Jim Dolmage received in December 2003 included a long newspaper clipping describing the battle at Tilly, its aftermath, and the experience of one of the prisoners taken there. There was nothing in the clipping to indicate the publication nor the subject of the interview, but Jim learned later that these were the recollections of Corporal John MacLean, in his words; and so we’ve transcribed them here. John is mistaken about the date as it was August 2nd this event happened.

Before the light of day on August 4, 1944, a patrol from another company had gone some distance into enemy territory and returned without contact. Later that same morning, before daylight, our patrol was sent into the same area. Evidently, the previous patrol had been spotted by the Germans. The Germans followed the patrol and moved in and set up machine gun positions. When our patrol came along, the Germans allowed the lead section to pass them unharmed before opening fire. At the same time the lead section had passed the German guns, we had received orders to return to our lines.

An anonymous note arrives

In November of 2003, I posted an ad in the Canadian Legion News, looking for WW II soldiers who had served with Ernie Phair. Among the replies I received was this anonymous note.

I later learned that it had been sent by the wife of John MacLean on his behalf. In the ad, I had included my e-mail address——which might explain his willingness to share what he did.

Included with this note was a newspaper article documenting his experience at Tilly, but that too had been stripped of any information that might identify the source!

John directed his family to get in touch with me after he passed away, which is how I learned all this and how I obtained the pictures of him during the war and as a veteran.

Second edition released

The second edition of The Night in Tilly’s Field is now online and ready to purchase.

Along with several corrections and modifications to the drawings, the dialogue and the writing has been improved for clarity.

On the advice of the experts at The Beguiling in Toronto, we decided to add some colour to the front and back covers. Roy Schulze did yeoman’s work to get everything—the uniforms, terrain, script, and logos—all perfect in a very real semblance of a 1950s war comic. We can only hope that readers will appreciate this melding of comic-book and graphic-novel styles.

My meeting with Bert Hearnden

This picture was taken when I interviewed Bert Hearnden at his home in Winnipeg. He was charming and warm and had clear memories of his time in France. Unfortunately, recalling the night of August 2, when Ernie was killed and Bert was taken prisoner, he was in tears and called it the “worst night of my life.”

Bert Hearden and Jim Dolmage, April 2004.

Ernie Phair reported missing

These telegrams were a callous and impersonal method of informing a family that a soldier was “missing.” This one was received by Ernie’s wife, Donalda, on August 13, 1944, who then had to inform their daughter Ann—who was four years old at the time—as well as Ernie’s parents, and the siblings he had reconnected with.

It was assumed that the worst had happened and that he’d been killed . . . but certainly the hope remained that that had not occurred. Meantime, his army wages were suspended, and his insurance policy was not paid out.

It was only in 1945, after Bert Hearnden and Murray Reid had been released as POWs and could confirm Ernie’s death, that Ernie’s wife and family received official notification that he had been killed in action.