HAMILTON—A week after Remembrance Day 2014, Nellie (Taylor) Emery from Hamilton wrote to the Expositor Office, enclosing a poem about the catastrophic Dieppe landing by Allied forces on August 19, 1942.
Ms. Emery, originally from Little Current, had found a poem about the Dieppe landing that had been penned by her uncle, the late Harold Hall, and had been published in The Expositor, likely in the 1970s.
“I was tidying up a drawer and I came across the clipping of the poem,” she wrote.
She knew it was from The Expositor from local references on the reverse side of the poetry clipping and added, “who knew he was a poet!”
Ms. Emery’s own father had also enlisted in the Second World War and she, her mother and sister had gone to stay with her Hall grandparents in Sheguiandah until war’s end.
“I remember Uncle Harold coming home,” she recalled about war’s end.
She knew her late uncle, who had been active in his later years with the War Pensioners of Canada organization, had been landed on the Dieppe beach as part of the Canadian contingent and that he had been a member of the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry regiment.
“The RHLI hall is quite close to where I live,” she said, and since she had found the poem just a few days before Remembrance Day, she took it to the regimental hall.
“They were thrilled to get it,” she said and she was told it would likely be read aloud on the Remembrance Day ceremonies conducted in the regiment’s hall.
“I was also told it would be framed and put on their wall of honour,” she explained in her communication with the paper.
Ms. Emery said when her father got out of the army, the family moved to Sudbury for work but she still has one cousin, Lloyd Taylor, in Little Current and hears about old friends like Pearl Lewis of Sheguiandah.
Mr. Hall’s poem follows:
On the 19th day of August, in the year of forty-two Five thousand young Canadians, with shoulder patches blue Wrote a gallant page in history that will forever live Gallant fighting men of Canada The boys of the Second Division. From their homes across the ocean in the land of the maple leaf They had volunteered for service and to fight for their belief And they formed the first invasion force that morning as they swept ‘Cross the English Channel to the beaches of Dieppe. They were heroes every one of them who stormed that beach that day Where two thousand died in battle and a thousand had to stay But so gallant was their endeavour for the world lest we forget That their names will live forever on the beaches of Dieppe. These were their famous regiments that stormed the beach that day: The Royal Regiment of Canada The Fuseliers Mont Royal The S.S.R.s Saskatchewan The Essex Scottish Loyal The Royal Hamilton light Infantry The Queen’s own Camerans too. The Gallant 14th Calgary tanks They all wore the patches blue. From the shores of Nova Scotia to the Pacific water’s tide From the foothills of the Prairies they had come here and they died From the farmlands of Ontario and the hills of old Quebec Yes, Second Division, your names will live forever at the beaches of Dieppe. – by Harold Hall
