f you watch the veterans march by
the National War Memorial this Remembrance Day, you may catch
a glimpse of Lucien Belair, possibly one of the luckiest men
alive.
You can spot him easily if you look for his beret. Out of the
bobbing ranks of blacks, blues, and scarlet reds, his will be
the only one that is the bright, Irish-green of the Algonquin
Regiment.
If you do see him and look really close at the back of his neck,
you might also see a faint pink scar.
A German sniper shot Belair through the neck in that very spot
60 years ago. Minutes later, a shell exploded right next to him
as he was borne off the field on a stretcher. One stretcher bearer
was killed, and the other was maimed, but Belair escaped with
minor injuries.
“I guess I was just born under a lucky star,” he says.
Belair, 80, is one of about 300,000 Second World War veterans
alive in Canada today. He was one of the many Canadian soldiers
who participated in the liberation of the Netherlands some 60
years ago.
The scar on his neck tells a story of both chance and remembrance.
Its central figure is Eddie O’Neil, a man who Belair knew
for only a few minutes, but remembered for the rest of his life.
Born in Ottawa in 1925, Belair joined the war effort on March
4, 1944. He served as a machine-gunner in the Algonquin Regiment,
and was stationed in Holland.
April 27, 1945, was his last day in action. He was searching
a house near the village of Osterscheps for enemies when he stopped
briefly by an open window.
A bullet struck him, passing beneath his lower-left jaw and out
the back of his neck, less than a thumb’s width from his
spine.
“Whoa, I was lucky,” Belair says. “Another half-inch
and I was gone.”
“A lot of times, you expect to get hit. I hadn’t the
faintest idea I’d get hit there,” he says, slapping
the arms of his chair for
emphasis.
Somehow, he stayed conscious. His squad-mates didn’t realize
the seriousness of his wound until they saw the blood seeping
through the bandages on his neck.
Two men carried him off on a stretcher: a German prisoner of
war and O’Neil. Even though they had never met before, Belair
says he knew immediately that O’Neil was from Eastern Canada
— he had a “special twang” in his voice that he
recognized. O’Neil, Belair learned, was just two months
older than him and a resident of Nova Scotia, just like Belair’s
girlfriend.
“And that’s when the Germans lobbed that gosh-darned
mortar.”
Belair escaped with shrapnel wounds to his leg. He spent the
next few months moving between military hospitals. For him, the
war was over.
Belair never saw O’Neil again. As far as he knew, O’Neil
had suffered the same fate he did — wounded, treated, and
sent home. He wrote in his journal that O’Neil had been
“struck off strength,” or removed from duty.
Belair went home, married his girlfriend Helen, and built a house,
in which they raised four children. He became a captain in the
Ottawa fire department, a job he held for 33 years.
Jane, his second daughter, remembers those days well. Speaking
from her Nova Scotian home, she says her father always had time
for his family despite long hours at work. “There were not
many suppertimes when he was not at home,” she says. “If
you ever needed advice or to know something, Daddy would help
you.”
She recalls how, when she had her tonsils removed, Belair snuck
into the hospital after visiting hours to give her a comic book.
“As a father, I wouldn’t trade him for anybody,”
she says.
Belair never talked much about the war when she was young, she
says. “I remember we were fascinated by the scar on his
neck. It was kind of cool at that time.”
The origins of that scar would come back to haunt Belair 54 years
after the end of the war.
Belair said he never realized O’Neil had died in that explosion.
In 1999, while visiting the Holten Military Cemetery in the Netherlands
on Sept. 10, the day before his 74th birthday, Belair stumbled
upon the man’s grave.
“There’s this stone: Eddie O’Neil. Holy cow, y’know,
that really shakes you, I’ll tell you that.” He pauses.
“You cry, I’m not kidding you, you cry. Because he
died because of me.” He pauses, again, looking off into
the distance. “He died because of me being wounded.”
Belair says this discovery “bugged him for a long time.”
Determined to make contact with O’Neil’s family, he
learned from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (the group
responsible for honouring war dead) that O’Neil’s parents
had lived in North West Arm, N.S.
He visited the town in 2002 and, on a whim, asked a man walking
a dog about the O’Neils. “And he said, ‘Well,
their daughter just lives up the street there with her son.’”
Belair now had a lead on O’Neil’s sister.
Her house was empty, so Belair knocked on the door across the
street. In another stroke of luck, he found the woman’s
cousin living there. The cousin told him that O’Neil’s
sister, Elsie Lewis, was still alive, but in hospital.
Belair visited her, introduced himself, and showed her his regimental
sashes and pin.
“As a rule,” he says, “when a guy gets killed,
you never find out how.” He told her how her brother had
died that April 27 and showed her a picture of his grave. “Oh,
she was happy,” he recalls.
Lewis died a month later.
Today, Belair spends much of his time jetting around town, acting
as chauffeur, deliveryman, and odd-job man for friends, family,
and fellow members of the Royal Canadian Legion.
Belair returned to the Netherlands in May to celebrate the 60th
anniversary of its liberation. “The people welcomed us so
well. You’re marching down the street and little kids, three
to four years old, just run out and hug and kiss you!” he
laughs.
While there, he returned to the Holten cemetery and laid a wreath
on O’Neil’s grave.
Belair’s youngest daughter says she has taken her two children
to the Remembrance Day ceremony in downtown Ottawa every year
since they were born.
“It’s important for them to grow up and respect veterans
and to see what kind of country we live in because of these guys,”
she says. “You don’t realize how awful (the war) was
until a parent tells you and I want my kids to realize how awful
it was.”
“I wouldn’t say he’s extremely lucky,” she
says of her dad. “He just does well in everything he does.
He’s worked hard all his life and just seems to bounce back
from things.”
A lot of veterans wear the dark blue beret of the Royal Canadian
Legion in the parade, but not Belair. “I wear my green beret,”
he says. “I like to honour my regiment. I wasn’t with
it for that many years, but I’ve developed quite a friendship
with the guys.
The Algonquin Regiment fielded some 4,000 men in World War Two.
Of those, Belair says, about 60 are alive today.
“That’s what I think about (in the parade): my friends
who are not there anymore.” |