Proud history of honouring returning service people

Winnipeg has a tradition of joyously celebrating the end of Canada’s wars and jubilantly greeting its returning soldiers.

In 1885, when the 90th Winnipeg Battalion — later known as the Royal Winnipeg Rifles — returned from the North-West Rebellion battlefields, the celebration was “the biggest day Winnipeg has ever seen.” Streets and businesses were decorated, a victory arch was erected and troops paraded down thoroughfares.

On Armistice Day, Nov. 11, 1918, the Free Press’s front page headline read, Winnipeg Celebrates Victorious End of War With Every Manifestation of Joy and Pride. Even the city’s sober and solid citizenry “vied with the younger element making the occasion one that will never be forgotten,” the newspaper reported.

As well, on Peace Day (July 19, 1919), a holiday declared throughout the British Empire to recognize the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Winnipeggers, from dawn to dusk, enjoyed “the greatest joy possible for human beings to experience … in peace celebrations.”

Anticipation had been building in the city for many days as the end of the Second World War approached.

In early May 1945, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill announced that hostilities would cease within a week; Italy had surrendered and its fascist dictator Benito Mussolini had been executed; Germany’s capital Berlin had fallen to Soviet Red Army troops; the German Führer Adolf Hitler was dead by suicide and his armies were surrendering en mass across Europe.

The news that thrilled Winnipeggers the most, wrote Free Press war correspondent Maurice Western on May 5, was that in Holland “powerful German forces, totalling perhaps a hundred thousand fighting men are turning in their arms to veteran Canadian units.” Winnipeg soldiers would soon be coming home.

The Rifles had courageously fought on D-Day, June 6, 1944, and then advanced across France into the deadly and gruesome battles of October 1944 to take the Scheldt Estuary and liberate the strategic port of Antwerp, Belgium.

During the winter of 1944-45, the Rifles took up positions near the Dutch city of Nijmegen and then advanced toward the Rhine River in Germany. In April and May, they fought their way through northern Holland and helped liberate the Netherlands.

The Rifles’ War Diary banally describes the regiment’s last war days:

Friday 4 May 1945 — Sunshine but cool wind. After a very quiet night everyone looks none the worse for their night in the great out-doors. We got the information from Brigade that the city of Aurich had surrendered. This news made us all feel very happy because we had expected to have to assault and take the place.

We arrived in Holtrop. We had no sooner arrived than we got two written messages. One was the very sad news that Maj. D.B. Robertson had died of wounds yesterday morning. (Winnipeg’s Brian Robertson, who was one of the first to enlist in the Rifles, was the last member to die in Europe.)

The other message said that no further offensive action by Infantry including patrolling would be taken. At 2030 hrs we heard over the BBC that resistance had ceased in HOLLAND, NW GERMANY, DENMARK and the FRIESIAN ISLANDS. Brigade sent us the following message at 2250 hrs: CEASE FIRE with effect from 0800 hrs.

During the Rifles’ time in action in the Second World War, 3,700 men served with 2,339 suffering casualties including 512 deaths.

On Monday, May 7, 1945, the Free Press wrote: “Thousands of Winnipeg citizens went mildly mad Monday morning when the Free Press sirens (which could be heard across the city) announced that victory in Europe has been won.”

The paper noted VE-Day would be celebrated the following day, and that the city’s beer parlours and liquor stores would be closed for two days. Police announced that drunks locked up in the city jail would be granted “amnesty” and set free.

“We expect people to celebrate today,” said Winnipeg’s deputy police constable, “and those locked up should be allowed to celebrate.” He added police “would allow latitude in the celebrations … so long as there is no wilful damage, there will be no trouble. Only when they go too far will there be any interference.”

As the 80th anniversary of VE-Day nears, D-Day veteran Jim Parks, now 100, is the last of the Rifles veterans who fought in the Second World War.

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of VE-Day in 1995, a Free Press editorial reminded us that, “The world is still not a perfect place. Buchenwald and Auschwitz may now only be monuments to the memory of evil, but there are other places where what they represent still exists. And while the world may not be perfect, it is a far better place because Canadians and others fought the Second World War. More people in more countries live in freedom, a freedom bought with blood, because Canadians went to war. It is important that the children today remember what their fathers and their mothers did and endured so that we can live in a better world.”

This is as true today as it was then.

Ian Stewart is a Winnipeg historian.