A veteran is honoured for fighting in France

by Sara Jewell

He no longer drives his shiny black Ford Ranger pickup truck and he walks with the help of a cane, but Chesley Atkinson still gets around. He goes out to lunch at least once a week with his caregiver, Cathy, and on the third Tuesday of every month, he attends the men’s supper at the United church in Pugwash, Nova Scotia. He’s lived in the village along the Northumberland Strait his entire 100 years—except for the seven and three-quarter years he served during the Second World War.

Firm handshake, twinkle in the eyes, and all the details, right down to the month, of his service. Although the memories are at times difficult, Corporal Atkinson is willing to share his stories.

“I had worked in the woods all winter and come down, and they were recruiting then, in April,” Chesley recalls of the spring of 1940. “We all put our names in but some of us never got a call. My friend Rupert’s father worked at headquarters in Halifax so we went down and on the second day of July, we got in.” They joined the newly-created C Company of the Halifax Rifles.

Born in 1919, Chesley was a few weeks shy of his 20th birthday when he started basic training at Camp Aldershot in Kentville, NS, and it would be another five years before he set foot on French soil in the summer of 1944. First, he went to Ontario for a mechanics course then an advanced course on tanks before being shipped to England, where the Halifax Rifles were disbanded and Chesley went to the armoured corps.

“I have a picture of the regiment before we went overseas,” he says. “We had everything brand new. Everything—socks, boots, underclothes. Two new uniforms. Everything was brand spanking new. Even a brand-new .303 rifle that had never had a shot fired off it.”

His treasured books include a dog-eared reference book of war tanks, and a book about the 4th Canadian Armoured Brigade that includes a map of the route his regiment took through France, Holland and Belgium to Germany.

“It was awful low country in Holland and Belgium and the tanks were stuck more than they were able to go,” Chesley says after he opens up the map and begins tracing the route with his forefinger. “We were the last one to go from England to Europe, and it took us over a year to get from there” (he points to their landing spot at Courselles-sur-Mer, west of Dieppe, France).

Promoted from mechanic to fitter, Chesley’s job was to fix the parts that broke down or were damaged most often on the tanks: the tracks and the clutches. This meant he had to be wherever the tanks were.

“The tanks used to run over land mines all the time,” he says. “They would blow the track off or the sides or the assemblies.” He points to chains hanging down in front. “That was to sweep for land mines and blow them up.”

There is the long, detailed story of his first battle, working alongside his tank driver, Billy Ball: of bursting out of woods into a field and knowing there were Germans under the haystacks; of taking fire and jumping out of the tank into deep, hot holes left by mortars, then feeling like their pants would burn off; of helping the injured and waiting all day in the sun for the ambulances to arrive; of walking a road for three days, thirsty and hungry, hoping a supply truck would come along.

Chesley lets loose with an expression when the memories become too vivid. “Holy ol’ mackerel Moses,” he exclaims about the speed of the mortar attacks, and the bodies flying everywhere.

He’s haunted by one particular man.

“The very first man I shot, I can’t forget him,” he says, sitting in his recliner in front of the sliding doors with a view of the Pugwash harbour. “I just can’t. He was as far as the wall in there from me, and I knew he was going to blast me if I didn’t get him first. I let him have it. People don’t realize, I never realized...I shot that fella. I can see him yet.”

Then there is this story from March, 1945. Chesley says his regiment hadn’t had a bath for a month and a half or any clean clothes. “Sometimes the clothes would stand alone,” he says.

He remembers the name of his commanding officer, Captain McGowan from PEI, and how he promised the men a bath when they reached a river.

“There was about 25 of us and we all took our clothes off. We piled into the river and thought it was great. Later, the fellow that ran the motorcycle took off and when he came back in an hour’s time, he said, ‘How do you feel, boys, since you had your bath?’ I asked him why he was asking that question, and he told me, ‘I just came down from up around the turn and there’s four dead cows in the river, swelled up as big as barrels.’ I never forgot that,” Chesley says. He adds it was a problem, however, all the dead cattle, and when they looked in the windows of houses… He shares what he saw but it’s not something to be printed. Too much memory for him, too much reality for us.

He brought more than memories home from the war.

“I’m still finding pieces of shrapnel in me now,” he says. “When the exploding shells landed, and they landed damn close to us a lot of the time, they blew quite a hole and everything within 40 or 50 yards was hit with sand and dirt—if nothing bigger. I was really lucky because I got hit close two or three times.”

He touches the white scar on his head. “A piece up here on the top of my forehead, that was the worse one I ever got. It was probably an inch and a half long. I got Billy to fix it for me.”

Even into his late 90s, he had pieces coming through the skin of his face. “Something came out the size of the head of a match and when I got the pinchers and squeezed, it broke up like a wee rock.”

After the war ended and Chesley returned home, he met and married Gladys Vanbuskirk in 1947. Her husband had been killed overseas and together they raised her daughter and two boys. Chesley was the wharf manager and harbour master in Pugwash for 41 years, worked for a pulp wood company, and was even the janitor at the local high school. Gladys died in 1994.

He retired in 1999, and in 2011, after suffering three heart attacks, realized he had to move from his long-time home because he couldn’t deal with going up and down the basement stairs to feed the wood furnace.

In 2014, a letter arrived from Ambassade de France au Canada.

The letter begins with “Monsieur,” and continues in French. In translation, the letter from the French embassy in Ottawa informed Chesley that, 69 years after the end of the war, he was being awarded the rank of Knight of the French National Order of the Legion of Honour.

The distinctive white medal on a red ribbon was installed on the right side of his jacket at the Pugwash Legion on November 11. War medals, such as the one Chesley received from Holland, are worn on the left.

Every World War Two veteran who fought under enemy fire on French soil is eligible to receive the French National Order of the Legion of Honour, and Chesley recalls vividly how he earned France’s highest decoration.

“I received that medal because of us fighting the Germans and clearing their country of them. They would never have got the Germans out of there by themselves,” Chesley says and this reminds him of days spent bombing a German town. “There was a prisoners of war camp there and we were going to tear it down. It was at the far end of the field and there were great big posts. The tanks were going to hook onto the posts and pull them out, but we had to do it in minutes because the officers were worried the soldiers in the POW camp would kill all the fellows there.”

Chesley admits the memories are difficult to deal with; he used to have nightmares that prompted his wife, Gladys, to wake him up. So he says age-related memory loss isn’t such a bad thing.

“Talking about it helps a little.”

He has one remaining child, his son, Roderick, who lives on Prince Edward Island, and on July 22, Chesley turns 100 years old, and he’ll celebrate with his family, including 13 great-grandchildren.

“I’m soon at the end of my trail,” Chesley muses from his two-bedroom bungalow on the appropriately-named Freedom Lane, “but I’m damn lucky to be as good as I am.”

Monsieur Corporal Atkinson, we are also lucky you were as good as you once were. 

Intro caption: Although the memories are at times difficult, 
retired Corporal Chesley Atkinson is willing to share his 
stories of life at war.

Header caption: Chesley keeps some photos tucked away in a box
with his corporal stripes. Two of the photos were taken at his
parents’ home in Pugwash before he was sent to England.