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14 - The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday November 18, 2006 www.oakvillebeaver.com World War II veteran gives students a living history lesson By Melanie Cummings OAKVILLE BEAVER STAFF Gord Hendery is one of the lucky ones. He's an 85-yearold Second World War veteran who lived to show and tell the stories of the human will to survive. He recently brought a suitcase full of photos, mortar shells, and a sword, as well as stories of wartime strife and adventure, to 200 Grade 10 history students at Oakville Trafalgar High School. His official rank is Lieutenant Commander. The medals on his chest plate tell of naval battle in Italy, Greece, France and North Africa. The snapshots he has kept all these years depict the human experience of war. They are images of men huddled in a mass on the deck of a ship, soaking with their life jackets fastened. Minutes before the photo was taken they had been scooped out of the fiery Syracusa Harbour in Italy after the Dutch merchant vessel The Baarn was bombed by German forces. An arrow points to where Hendery is standing on that rescue ship. Another picture reveals smiling faces of the townspeople in a Greek fishing village that Hendery visited while on leave and another of Hendery with the Egyptian Sphinx and its pyramids in the background. He told students stories of unbearable heat, frigid cold, of being dirty, greasy, unshaven and sick with malaria, of sleepless nights and of looking up at waves of water towering over a battleship that was being tossed by wind and water, like a toy boat in a bathtub. "I wondered `how am I going to survive this?' Then I made my promises to God that I'd be good. I didn't keep my promise though," he said sheepishly. This living history presentation is one of many Hendery and 1,500 other veterans have done nationwide over the past four years, as part of The Memory Project, which connects veterans with students. The questions posed to him are typical: `Were you scared?' Hendery's reply is always the same. "We had a job to do and got through knowing others were relying on us. We became fatalists out of a need to survive," said Hendery. That mindset was especially necessary on D-Day, June 6, 1944, when Canadian assault troops stormed ashore in the face of fierce opposition from German strongholds. Hendery manned one of several landing crafts that transported the 51st Canadian Scottish troops from Vancouver and the North Nova Scotia Regiment from the Maritimes onto Juno Beach for the attack. "As we went toward the shore, all hell broke loose. All the big ships and every ship that had a gun were starting to bombard the shore...we knew full well there would be unpleasant fire to greet us when we got there. On the way into the beach the water was quite rough and, unfortunately, the boys were seasick because they'd had a big meal the night before. But a wonderful thing happened on the way in. One of the sergeants got up on top of the deck and quickly as possible because there were other landing crafts to follow us in and land their troops as well." When Hendery maneuvered the craft back to the HMCS Prince Henry his story went across Canadian newswire. His name was mentioned and that's how his family learned he was safe. And a new generation has also learned the price that was paid to garner their peaceful lives. A crowd of students gathered around Hendery following the presentation to see his memorabilia. As it dissipated Hendery quietly packed up. "What do I get out of this?" he replied to a reporter's question. "It's knowing that children who didn't know about Canada's fighting men will know about them now," said Hendery. Students honouring alumni who died in Second World War The names of 23 Second World War casualties listed on a cenotaph at Oakville Trafalgar High School deserve to be recognized a world away at the Juno Beach Centre in Courseulles-surMer, France. As time marches on the stories and sacrifices of the 23 soldiers who were former OT students, are being kept alive by their peacetime successors. Students and staff are fundraising to pay the $250 cost to buy individually engraved plaques or `bricks' for each of these wartime heroes. Multiply that cost by 23 and the fundraising goal becomes $5,750. The veterans' bricks will include the person's rank, name, decorations, unit, dates of service, as well as a comment regarding the veteran's service, such as `Italian Campaign', `Battle of the Atlantic' or `D-Day Veteran'. "It will be a huge undertaking," said Pam Calvert, a social science/English teacher who visited the Juno Beach Centre last summer. Located in Normandy, the Juno Beach Centre is a museum and culture centre that presents the war effort made by all Canadians everywhere during the Second World War. Calvert said the community is also invited to sponsor a brick. The school's students are also interested in soliciting information from local relatives and friends who knew these 23 men: Laurie Dynes, Harry P. Farr, Ralph Featherstone, Bruce Fox, C. Bremmer Green, Charles Hersom, Edward Hillmer, Edmund Keller, John Kemp, Kenneth Kemp, John King, William Lawrence, Ross McBain, William Marshall, Granville Morris, Nelson Purdue, Wallace Pickering, Balfour Ramsay, Charles Rivaz, Gordon Slater, Maurice E. Webb, John Wilson and John Young. The Oakville Trafalgar effort is part of a region-wide memorial project called `Building on the Past' that was initiated by the Halton District School Board and the Halton District Catholic School Board. The recently-launched project aims to raise awareness of peace and conflict issues among students and also to purchase as many Juno Beach bricks as possible for each of the 264 volunteers from Halton County who were killed in the Second World War. LIESA KORTMANN / OAKVILLE BEAVER EYE-WITNESS REPORT: Lieutenant commander Gord Hendery shares his Second World War experiences with students at Oakville-Trafalgar High School. started to sing `Roll Out the Barrel'. And we all joined in. Just for a moment the fear on the boys' faces left. We were all smiling." With the landmark in sight Hendery carefully made his way there by wiggling around explosive mines set in the water. "I didn't want to give the order `door down' but I did. The boys had to jump into water up to their waist." A soldier of short stature drowned immediately upon exiting. "Can you imagine being frightened and sick and jumping into water with your rifles and a 60-pound pack on your back against enemy fire?" With bullets flying all around them Hendery saw a couple of boys killed as they tried to dash across the beach sopping wet. "There was nothing we could do. We had to get out as SPACE AGE SHELVING The Storage Specialists Join Us! 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