A soldier, a war bride, and a son

Story by Stephen J. Thorne

There’s something about authority that rubs Creagens the wrong way, for better or for worse.

This story begins with Harry Edward Creagen, a native Irishman who fought with the 35th Battalion, 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles, during the First World War.

He was captured by German forces during the Battle of Sanctuary Wood near Ypres, Belgium, in June 1916. Private Creagen, now a prisoner of war, escaped three times, only to be recaptured each time. After his third getaway, his captors forced him to stand in a rainstorm for 24 hours. It compromised his health for the rest of his days, and Harry Edward Creagen died a young man in 1930.

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Sherman tanks storm through Sicily

Story by Sharon Adams

Jack Wallace, a 23-year-old Sherman tank commander with the Three Rivers Regiment, arrived in Sicily in the heat of summer 77 years ago, he recalled in Shermans in Sicily: The Diary of a Young Soldier, Summer 1943.

Aboard ship for Reveille before 6 a.m. July 10, by 5 p.m. his regiment was ordered to join the attack on Burgio, says the diary, reproduced in Canadian Military History in 1998.

In the next two days, they rolled through three towns that were taken or surrendered. Things were about to heat up.

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July 10, 1940

Canadian Spitfire pilot Charley Fox strafes a black car,
injuring German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, known as the Desert Fox.
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