As Remembrance Day is observed each year, it has been the custom of the Kamsack Times to carry a feature story that in some way relates to the service provided by residents during times of military conflict or those guarding the nation to help prevent those times of conflict. Over the years the stories of many men and women have been recounted as a way of encouraging residents to never forget their sacrifices.
This year the Times’ archives were opened to re-visit the experiences of three residents whose stories were printed in this newspaper nearly a quarter century ago. They are the stories of a man with memories of a bloody Christmas Eve in 1944, and two women who helped fight the Second World War on the home front.
Marcel Langelier
Christmas Eve, 1944, was the bloodiest day in the life of Marcel Langelier, a Kamsack man, who said he had been forever scarred by the memory of the bomb attack as he scampered behind the Allied advance in Italy.
In a story in 1992, Langelier said he remembers that Christmas Eve like no other. He had been in the Canadian army for three years, trained in combat and in machine maintenance. His contingent followed the lines, ready to repair and make workable the equipment needed to advance.
He had been in England, France and Belgium, and now he was in Italy, having progressed "up the boot" from the landing in Sicily.
As often was the case, Langelier was working in the quarter-master store and had the "bad luck" of guard duty.
Italy had been dry and hot, with ants all over the ground, he said. Before pitching their tents, the soldiers had learned to spray fuel on the ground and burn it, hoping to kill the ants. It brought relief for a while at least.
All the way up Italy the routine was the same: the camp would begin to move in the middle of night. The vehicles would follow one another; the drivers keeping a sharp eye on a small, thumb-size white light installed on the vehicle ahead for that purpose.
Langelier drew guard duty. Again. They were camped about 25 miles out of a place with a name that sounded like "Artema." The Canadian Vingt-deux were fighting ahead.
In the distance he could see an allied bomber, dropping his payload, which looked "like cigars coming down."
"Then there was a cloud of smoke as they hit the ground.
"The picture is so clear," Langelier said. "The Adriatic Sea was on the right.
"All at once, out of the fog, there came a whining sound.
"Luftwaffe.
"Three of them.
"They came over the camp, spraying us with bullets.
"There were only three. They went up, made the turn, came back and dropped the anti-personnel bombs; small, two or two-and-a-half inches around, with fins.
"When we heard the sound, we all dropped to the ground."
When it was over, Langelier looked up. The guy in the lorry, about 10 feet away, took a hit. He was wounded.
"I was damned lucky.
"Someone hollered: `stretcher.' I ran back to the truck to get a stretcher and returned to the voice: `Soldier wounded!'"
Langelier took the stretcher to the wounded soldier.
"The shape he was in..." he said with a sigh.
"He was hit by shrapnel from bombs that make three-foot craters.
"He was cut in half. His foot dangled at the ankle."
Langelier helped remove personal effects from the body: the identification tag and papers.
"We had to try to put the body in the stretcher."
Langelier describes the "death blanket," an item reserved in all solders' packs for the ultimate purpose. He "folded" the body inside the boy's blanket.
"A lot of blood.
"It's amazing how quickly things happen. We were just standing there. I had never seen a bomb released. Then, one, two, three, four, five, six; like cigars. Whoosh, past you. Dust all over the place.
"That was the only bad day we had: December, 24, 1944."
Langelier stayed in Europe for another five months, advancing north in Italy, then he was stationed in Holland where he repaired Canadian military equipment, before he was released to return home.
"Something from the war keeps bothering him," his wife, Frances, said during an interview in the couple's Windsor Avenue home in late October, 1992. "He saw death. He experienced fear. It will be with him forever."
One of eight children born to Antonio and Agnes Langelier of Gravelbourg, a couple who had moved west from Quebec, Marcel was born in 1918. He grew up in Gravelbourg and after school, went to work on the farm.
In July 1941, he and a neighbour, Leo Bouvier, enlisted. Later the best man at his wedding, Bouvier also returned safely, and has remained a life-long friend.
While training at Winnipeg, Langelier had agreed to go on a blind date where he met Frances Sukovieff. Born in British Columbia and raised at Veregin, Frances had been working in Winnipeg when a sister introduced her to her future husband.
The couple married, in secret, on June 17, 1942, and the bride followed the husband east.
In December, 1942, he boarded the steamship Queen Elizabeth, carrying about 1,800 troops from Halifax to Liverpool. At first, Frances returned to the farm near Veregin and began her daily ritual of writing the letters she would faithfully mail overseas. In 1944, she returned to Ontario and got a job at Orellia, working in an aircraft tail-wheel assembly plant, dreading a "knock on the door." She spent free time "hoping and praying" her husband was safe. His letters to her were so severely censored; she never got to learn too much about his whereabouts nor anything of his missions.
Langelier stayed in England, training, hearing stories of preparations for the big Allied invasion. Who was to go? Where will they go? When?
"We trained and waited."
By early 1944, the word had spread. They were to go west with the first division of the invasion of Sicily.
They began the move, first to France, and because Langelier could speak French, he was the guy the others would cajole into finding favours.
"You speak French. You go ask the farmer for fresh bread," they would tell him.
It was a secret convoy of about 275 men to which Langelier was attached. It went on to Belgium as the men waited for the invasion to begin.
With the crew responsible for the maintenance of equipment and vehicles, Langelier changed motors, replaced guns and worked with the artillery. The crew was to follow the army about 25 miles behind, ready and able to make the repairs and do the maintenance in order that the advance could continue.
It was when the maintenance men were told to spray the trucks with diesel fuel, to protect them from corrosion by salt water, that Langelier knew the ocean voyage was imminent.
"They stunk like hell," he says, reminded of the smell of the trucks, freshly sprayed with the protective cover of fuel.
The army left Antwerp, landed in Sicily and began the advance north through Italy.
Eventually, the spirits of the men in uniform were heightened after hearing the news of the surrender of Italy and then of V-E Day.
Langelier stayed on in Europe, maintaining and cleaning the Canadian vehicles.
Leaving England in October 1945, Langelier settled on a quarter section of land north of Veregin.
The couple, now with six children, moved to Kamsack in 1972. After working with the public works department of the Town of Kamsack for 17 years, he retired, at 65, in 1981.
"When someone goes to war, he meets many Canadians who are not the same as he is, but he fights side-by-side with them. One guy is as good as the other."
Making his way about his home with the aid of an aluminum walker, Langelier was overcome with emotion as he talked of the Canadian flag he proudly flew in his backyard.
"One night someone stole the flag and Marcel got so mad he cried," Frances explained. "He was hurt. He kept asking why someone would do such a thing."
"I'd stand by that flag any day," he said. "I'm proud of the flag and for the country it stands for."
Helen Tysowski
"On Remembrance Day, I always think of all those who lost their lives,” Helen Tysowski said in 1991. “They were the youth of all the countries that were at war. All the countries lost a lot. And they're still fighting. Have we not learned anything?"
During the Second World War, Tysowski was with the Canadian Women's Army Corps, travelling throughout eastern Ontario, recruiting other young women to join the war effort.
"Did the war change me? I don't know," she said during an interview. "All my life I've been a very independent person. And, for the army, I had to work on my own. I had been taught to do my best. If you do something, do it properly.
"The only thing that bothered me about my work was having to sell the advertisements. I hated having to ask people for money.
"But, I met many people working for the army, including my husband."
Born at Burstall, then moved to Watson with her family when she was six years old, Helen Knopp was one of her parents' seven children who served during the war. They were all with the army excepting a sister who was a crash ambulance driver with the air force.
Her sister, Ann Prokopetz of Kamsack, had worked with the American army; another sister, Elsie Wright of Lakefield, Ont., was a dispatch writer, and a third, Martha Hanson of Watson, drove the ambulance for the air force.
Her brother, Fred, of Washington, USA, served as a staff sergeant with the army's air corps; Hubert of Chilliwack, B.C. was with the tank corps, and Elgin, of Oshawa, Ont., was attached to the army service corps.
And, as family history has it, her grandfather, Michael Knopf, had a service record: he worked as a tailor to the Russian Czar before he immigrated to the USA in 1901.
"Why did you join the army?" she is asked.
Helen remembers being in Winnipeg in 1942, working as an aid in the Victoria Hospital, when she saw the large sign in a store window.
"Canada Needs You!" screamed the sign in the recruiting office.
She went inside and two weeks later, after a medical examination that said she was in A-1 shape, she was in the Canadian Women's Army Corps, working at Fort Garry in the officers' mess.
By August, 1942, she was at Fort Frontenac, near Ottawa, taking more basic training. It was there that she was selected for the recruiting staff.
Based at Ottawa and provided with a car and driver, Tysowski booked appointments then visited the communities up and down the St. Lawrence River, encouraging others to join the war effort.
Not only did she place advertisements in local newspapers, pose for photographs publicizing her work, tell prospective recruits about the army and select the women, she also had to solicit the businessmen to pay for the advertising.
"In the beginning, people didn't really like seeing women in the service. We had to be beyond reproach. In recruiting, you had to be even more so."
In 1942 she was selected for guard duty for a princess visiting Toronto. Later she learned she was guarding Princess Alice, the Countess of Athlone, the mother of HRH Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh.
Helen met her future husband, Stan, in May, 1943 while he was an army sergeant working at the regimental accounting office near Kingston. The couple was married on January 8, 1944. She was discharged at Winnipeg in May 1944, after she discovered that she was pregnant.
After Stan's discharge, the couple moved to Kamsack. She retired in 1987 after working as an aid at the Kamsack and District Nursing Home for 13 years.
Jessie Murdock
"I wouldn't want to see another war, but I'm glad I was able to do my part in that one,” Jessie Murdock said in 1991 as she discussed her role in the war effort. From 1943 to 1946, she was with the women's division of the Royal Canadian Air Force.
Murdock was in Halifax, Nova Scotia, working in the command intelligence office, sworn to secrecy, typing memos and reports, relaying information about troop movements and other confidential material.
"She knew about submarines in the St. Lawrence River before anyone else," her husband, Russell, had said during an interview in the couple's Kamsack home.
"I heard of casualties every day," she said. "I heard of so many people being killed."
Born at Neville, Jessie Noble had three brothers in the services; one was in the air force, two in the navy. She wore the engagement ring Russell gave her at Black Diamond, Alta., while on an embarkation leave in 1941. He was an air force radar mechanic who was also overseas.
Jessie joined the RCAF women's division on September 15, 1943.
She received basic training at Rock Cliff, Ont., where the recruits were "out on the parade grounds every day."
She chose administration and would have clerical duties, as opposed to other options, including working with telephones, in meteorology, with equipment or cooking.
While at Halifax, a hub of the war effort with "ships coming and going, sailors on leave," her days were rather routine and disciplined.
She was a witness of the riots on May 5, 1945, which was VE-Day (Victory in Europe). She explains how all the servicemen, from the navy, army and air force, had been on Citadel Hill for the VE Day program.
And after the signal to disband, chaos broke out when the soldiers discovered that Halifax was closed. Its bars and liquor stores were not open because of the holiday, and celebratory libations were unavailable.
She was still at her desk at 7 p.m., July 10, 1945 when a blast from a munitions ship in Halifax harbour shook the building she was in.
Jessie was discharged at Dartmouth on Oct. 17, 1946, a time when many "stations" were being closed. She returned to Saskatchewan and began working as a clerk with a film distribution company at Regina. She and Russell were married on May 22, 1948.
Enjoying the camaraderie that is immediate when associating with others who were in the service, Jessie had attended five reunions of RCAF WDs. She was one of 800 WDs at Winnipeg in 1969. There were 600 veterans at Halifax in 1983 and more than 1,000 at Ottawa in 1985 when they were addressed by Governor-General Jeanne Sauve. She attended a reunion at Calgary in 1988 and was a representative at the 50th anniversary celebration of the WDs at Winnipeg.
Asked how her war service record had affected her, Murdock said that having been from a small town, it had broadened her horizons.
"But we lost a generation," she said.
