A Letter from Frank. Stephen J. Colombo
below, cursing his moment of weakness. How long had he been out? As his heart raced, his mind cleared and he remembered they hadn’t seen a German Panzer in days, other than burned out hulks littering the countryside around Falaise. The tall outline of a Sherman tank churned into view, a cloud of dust billowing behind it. Relief turned to hope, and then to disappointment when Russ saw it was not one of the missing tanks, but one nicknamed Margorie. Standing in its turret was his friend, Jim Derij (“pronounced Derry,” as Jim tired of telling those who butchered his name).
Russ and Jim were assigned to the same unit a few months before D-Day, both newly qualified as lieutenants, each given four tanks as their first command. Together they guarded the Fourth Canadian Armoured Division’s headquarters — General George Kitching and his mobile communications centre. Besides being the most junior lieutenants in the divisional headquarters, they were also its only combat officers. And they were about the only two officers at headquarters not calling themselves British by descent. That may have had something to do with the bond they formed.
Jim directed his driver to bring Margorie alongside Russ’s vehicle. The lieutenants climbed down in the narrow space between the tanks, exposing themselves as little as possible, aware of the risk of German snipers. Talking tiredly, they found neither had encountered any sign of the missing tanks. Eighty tons of steel and ten men had simply vanished into the French countryside.
Owen Sound had a quiet caste system neatly segregating its society. There were those who were British and those who were not. Those it favoured seldom disregarded that system. The British — English, Anglo-Irish, or Scots — occupied the top rungs. Everyone else came below that. Near the lower end were those from southern Europe. This was the society Charles Colombo entered when he arrived in Owen Sound in 1905. It was a far cry from Baden, the largely German town he’d grown up in. Hearing German spoken on the streets of Baden and nearby Kitchener was common. But speaking German on the streets of Owen Sound would have been frowned on by some.
In Owen Sound, Charles’s last name identified him as a foreigner. Few knew the ethnicity of his name. Charles learned soon after arriving in Owen Sound to expect a cold response at best when he told someone his father spoke only Italian and his mother only German. It was hard to say which people considered less desirable: German, still stigmatized by the Great War, or Italian, a people viewed as unwanted and undesirable. Though Charles was born in Canada, being maligned for one’s “foreign” nationality was commonplace in Victorian towns. Despite the stigma attached to his name, Charles was made foreman of a crew of men with names like McDearmid, Sutton, and King. Their resentment was hardly surprising.
If Charles had wavered in the face of social standards, his son Russ would never have been born. Owen Sound’s respectable society would never have approved of Charles, the Italian boarding house resident, romancing his landlord’s visiting niece. But this is what happened when Blanche Cheney, a young American, visited her aunt in Owen Sound.
When Blanche returned to Genoa, Ohio, after her visit, she broke the news to her parents. She hoped they would respect her wish to marry Charles and move to Canada. She also had to break the news to the minister she was engaged to. Her parents reluctantly gave their blessing, allowing Blanche to marry the enigmatic Charles that summer. It was not often an Italian Catholic such as Charles married an English Protestant.
Charles and Blanche with Russ (lower left), Verdun, and Jack in 1916 in front of their home on 492–14th Street West, Owen Sound.
Together they prospered in Owen Sound, raising three boys in their sprawling house. They grew peonies and roses in their garden, and gathered eggs from the coop Charles built in the backyard. Russ was the third of their three boys, born on Valentine’s Day, 1916. Blanche nicknamed him “Sweet.” He had two older brothers. The first was born a year after Charles and Blanche married. The second arrived on Christmas Eve, 1914. When his second son was born, Charles patriotically flew a Canadian flag on his front porch and named the boy Verdun, after the French city that had stood almost alone against the Germans. At the time, the outlook for the Allies was terrible, and each day’s newspaper headlines were viewed with foreboding.
Charles did not join either of the volunteer regiments Owen Sound sent to join the Canadian Expeditionary Force. Men in war industries were told anyone could learn to carry a rifle, but they were needed to keep production moving at Kennedy’s, an important manufacturer of propellers for navy ships and shell casings for the army.
Kennedy’s boomed from war contracts during the Great War and continued to boom in the 1920s. Charles and Blanche and their small family likewise flourished. Their automobile was made possible by the thirty dollars a week Charles made for the fifty-five hours he worked. Each workday began at seven a.m. with a blast of Kennedy’s whistle and ended with another ten hours later. Kennedy’s was the hub of their lives.
The large machinery at Kennedy’s fascinated ten-year-old Russ. His father showed him how the wooden forms were like hollow eggs when packed with a shell made of wet sand and clay. Mold-making was an art complicated by the shrinkage of the metal as it cooled, requiring forms to be larger than the final size of the cast object. On the Sunday afternoon of his visit the large metal bucket hung on a hoist from the ceiling was still warm to touch. When the sand in a form dried, the bucket was manoeuvred overhead for pouring. If the sand mold was not dry enough, his father explained, there would be an explosion of high-pressure steam, and molten metal would fly into the air like an exploding volcano.
Charles watched Russ run to the far end of the foundry, where a massive bronze propeller stood. Russ ran his hand along the swan-like curve of the giant propeller’s edge. It had come out of a gigantic wooden form and was destined for a Great Lakes freighter being built in Collingwood. Before the form was cracked open, a crowd of factory workers gathered. A major flaw was costly, requiring the casting to be started over. Charles, accompanied by Mr. Kennedy, closely examined the expensive casting. The suspense lasted close to thirty minutes, and in the end Mr. Kennedy shook Charles’s hand. The final step was cleaning the layer of sand adhering to the casting’s surface. A high-pressure air hose blew the sand off the metal, filling the foundry with a fine dust.
Russ coughed as dirt thrown in the air by Jim’s tank settled in his throat. As the two lieutenants discussed where to take their search, a jeep came bouncing towards them. Russ recognized Major Campbell in the passenger’s seat, one hand steadying himself on the jeep’s dash while holding his helmet on with the other. Russ involuntarily looked at his uniform to see if anything was out of place.
When Major Clarence Campbell had taken command of the Headquarters Squadron, only weeks before D-Day, word quickly spread that he was the same Campbell who was a referee in the National Hockey League. His troops became familiar with the fiery temper he sometimes displayed as a referee. Opinions on Campbell were split between the career soldiers and some of the volunteers. Most career soldiers, like Jim, found Campbell tough but fair. But to some, like Russ, volunteers for the Canadian army who for four years had trained interminably while often living in miserable conditions, Campbell’s criticisms for minor lapses were harder to accept. Now that the Division was in Normandy, to the men, stressed by near constant combat and lack of sleep, an eruption of his temper was the last thing they needed.
Since reaching Normandy in late July 1944, the Fourth Division’s armoured regiments had been badly mauled by the Germans. Within the first week of arriving, their deadly 88-mm guns destroyed many Canadian tanks. As the division’s tank regiments were decimated, Russ and Jim increasingly found their tanks dispensed to the hottest parts of the battlefield. But the missing Headquarters tanks had vanished during what should have been a simple reconnaissance mission. Since then, the Major had pushed Jim and Russ to locate them, as if he held them responsible. It was another case of the Major causing Russ’s anger to roil just below the surface.
Russ’s fist slammed into the other boy’s cheek, snapping his head backward. At six feet, sixteen-year-old Russ was as tall as the nineteen-year-old. The older boy stumbled backwards and fell. Russ rained punches on him, his blue eyes cold as steel.
“I give up!” the boy said, blood running from his