Vet treasures medal 'for preservance'

Grateful Dutch woman sewed a statue into soldier's jacket lining

Grant Henderson shows his treasured statue of St. Joseph holding infant Jesus.

By TONY CASHMAN
Special to the WCR
Edmonton

When Grant Henderson was 19, he earned battle stars with the Canadian Army in the liberation of Belgium and Holland.

But on the 11th of November each year, in the warmth of his Edmonton home with memories of cold, bitter fighting through the last winter of war, a different sort of medal has more meaning than stars and service ribbons.

The story of the medal, which is just one inch high, begins with the Allied armies in a desperate situation.

In September 1944, they captured the Belgian port of Antwerp, second largest in Europe with 45 km of docks.

Muddy 'Water Rats'

But Allied ships were not able to bring in supplies needed to continue the offensive because German guns still controlled the approach to the harbour, the narrow 20-km estuary of the River Scheldt. The Canadian First Army was ordered to clear the banks.

It was the muddiest campaign of the war. Much of the land was below sea level and floodgates had been opened. In North Africa, the Eighth Army enjoyed their nickname Desert Rats. Grant and the men in the Battle for the Scheldt called themselves the Water Rats.

Grant was no stranger to mud, having grown up in Edmonton in the 1920s and '30s when spring could turn unpaved streets to grasping tenacious muck. It took six weeks to open the waterway. Grant survived the battle, which 848 Canadians did not.

After the battles he and C Company of the Highland Light Infantry moved into a rest camp with mud-caked mementos of the war clinging to everything - their uniforms, equipment, tents, vehicles, themselves.

Then came a message from the mayor of Ghent, the nearest city. The men of C Company were invited to spend five days holiday in Ghent as guests of grateful citizens enjoying freedom after four years of the Nazis.

By military tradition C Company should march into the host city in spic-and-span formations. But this mud-caked bunch would have presented such a dismal appearance it was thought wiser for citizens to cheer the soldiers by the truckload.

Jumping down from their truck, Grant and his chum went looking for a good Samaritan who could do something about their uniforms.

Spic-and-span

A kindly tailor understood. He directed them to a closet, indicated that they should hand over all their clothes and stay in the closet because there were girls in the shop.

Medal of St. Joseph and Jesus

An hour later everything was handed back, washed and pressed, and the cleanest Canadians in Ghent went to meet their hosts, a family who lived at the back of their furniture store.

They were the old parents, probably not as old as they appeared to teenage soldiers and a daughter in her twenties.

Conversation was an amusing parlour game. The guests spoke English to the daughter who spoke French to her mother who relayed the message to her husband (in a loud voice because he was deaf) in Flemish, the only language he understood.

These kind people could not offer the visitors a bed, but a mattress in the storeroom gave the best sleep in weeks. And Grant was able to make some return for the hospitality.

As a signaler with C Company he had custody of the company's radio telephone, which he carried in a backpack. The radio brought in news broadcasts from the BBC.

Relayed in French and Flemish, the news brought obvious pleasure to people reconnecting with a world from which they had long been isolated.

Bitter farewell

It was one of those brief encounters in wartime that linger deepest in memory because they're away from the grim business of war. Sending their guests back into it was an emotional trial for the family.

In tears, the daughter asked permission to sew religious medals into their jackets and created one of those marvellous moments when someone outside the English language zone, striving for the right word, invents a new one.

"For preservance," she said. "For preservance."

On Nov. 11, 1944, the anniversary of the first armistice, the Highland Light Infantry arrived at Nijmegen, with five months fighting ahead, through Holland and over the Rhine. Grant hadn't seen the medal but often felt it in the lining of a breast pocket.

Treasuring the 'medal'

When the army issued a new uniform, he cut out the lining and carried the medal to the end of the war and home, still in its patch. In time, the cloth frayed and the medal, more meaningful than battle stars, emerged. An inch high, it was a miniature statue of St. Joseph holding the infant Jesus. "For preservance," as the young woman in Belgium said.

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