PIAPOT, Sask. – Harry Forbes never did like walking.
Dancing, well, that’s different. But why walk anywhere when a good horse or a vehicle will do?
So two weeks into basic training, in April 1942, the 24 year old signed up for the artillery.
“I was always allergic to walking,” Forbes wrote in his self-published book What Price Freedom. “So I joined something where I thought I could ride.”
Guns on wheels had to be towed, he reasoned. The artillery’s job was to set up behind the infantry and fire shells on the enemy ahead so that the infantry could advance.
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“I still can’t walk,” Forbes, now nearing 89, said during an interview. “But I can dance all night.”
Forbes grew up on a farm about 25 kilometres northwest of Maple Creek. When Canada went to war he, like many other prairie boys, felt the call of duty and signed up in the fall of 1941.
“We had no choice,” he recalled of the decision. “Hitler likely would’ve been over here, with all the open country we have.”
Forbes returned to that open country in November 1945 after four years in the army, two of them spent fighting overseas. He and his wife raised their three daughters on a ranch southeast of Piapot, where he still keeps a Black Angus cow herd. He sold most of the 17-quarter ranch to his brother and nephew in 1990, retaining a section and switching from Herefords to Angus.
And, he still goes dancing a couple of times a week.
He co-wrote the book with his brother-in-law Tony Hoszouski, who lives near Innisfail, Alta., to answer their grandchildren’s questions about war.
“We thought we’d write a book so younger people would get some idea of what war was about,” Forbes said.
For him, it started with basic training in Ontario and an eight day sea voyage to Liverpool, England, zigzagging across the Atlantic to avoid the torpedoes. From there, it was on to France, Belgium, Holland and Germany. Hoszouski, who was in the infantry, went to Italy, then France, Belgium and Holland.
“We joined together in Holland and drove those Germans out,” Forbes recalled.
The book documents events experienced by both men, as well as key battles they weren’t involved in but had knowledge of through other soldiers. The stories run the emotional gamut.
“As I try to write today I have too many memories with which to contend,” wrote Hoszouski.
“Sixty years ago today, May 23, 1944, I was wounded and lost almost all of my men in the Hitler Line. Though my memory may not be exceptional, I can hear, see and smell everything about that day clearly.”
Forbes spent the final days of the war in hospital in Lille, France, suffering from a kidney and bladder infection. He then was assigned to a camp for German prisoners before sailing back home.
He has never been back.
But if he had, it would have been to Holland.
Tears come to his eyes as he recalls the Dutch people who were so grateful to Canadian soldiers that nearly 60 years later they sent medals to Canadian veterans to thank them.
“This medal means more to me than anything I have from that war,” Forbes said.
He said he was lucky to come back in one piece.
It would be nice if the Canadian and Saskatchewan governments recognized and appreciated the veterans’ contributions as much as the younger generation in Holland does, he added.
He was part of an effort last year to raise money for a plaque to remember 51 servicemen from the Maple Creek, Sask., area killed during the Second World War.
After collecting donations, the group was astounded to learn they had to pay both GST and provincial sales tax on the plaque, an amount worth about $12.50 per soldier.
Taxing a remembrance of dead heroes is wrong, Forbes said. Without their sacrifice Canadians wouldn’t be enjoying the kind of country they have today, he added.
