Remembering a Welsh farm boy
who became a Canadian hero at Vimy Ridge
By EIFION WILLIAMS
VANCOUVER – On November 11, whether by simply wearing a poppy or attending a cenotaph memorial service, Canadians of all ages and ethnic backgrounds will honour the sacrifice of generations of their countrymen who have served or are still serving their country on battlefields far and wide.
While sharing in the collective act of remembrance, many will also remember individual family members, colleagues, friends and neighbours who went to war, some never to return.
On Remembrance Day, I always reflect on members of my own family who have served in Twentieth Century wars from South Africa to the Falkland Islands.
Most recently, in 1982 my brother, Commander Tom Williams, barely survived when his ship, HMS Ardent, was bombed and sunk by the Argentine Air Force in San Carlos Bay during the Falklands War. Twenty-two of his fellow crew members died in the attack.
Forty years earlier in 1942, his namesake, Royal Marine Corporal Tom Williams, my father’s brother, was declared ‘missing in action’ when his ship, the aircraft carrier HMS Hermes, was sunk by Japanese aircraft in the Indian Ocean off the southern coast of Ceylon. His body was never found.
Going back another generation, I have a special interest as a Canadian in another relative, my great uncle, Ben Williams, whose life seems to mirror Canada’s history in the first half of the Twentieth Century.
Ben Williams left his farm home in rural Carmarthenshire, Wales, in 1899 at the age of 17 to serve as a British volunteer in the Boer War. After the war, following an encounter with Canadian Boer War volunteers, he emigrated to Canada and homesteaded in Saskatchewan.
These were the years when new settlers in Canada’s Northwest could obtain a quarter-section of prairie land for $10 on a promise to produce a crop on it within a certain number of years. I still have his original homestead permit and receipt for $10.
In 1914 he volunteered for the Canadian First Division and shipped out to France to fight in the First World War.
In April 1917, Major Ben Williams won the Military Cross for bravery under fire during the Battle of Vimy Ridge. His citation states that, while greatly outnumbered by the enemy, he showed exemplary courage and leadership in leading a group of men to destroy an enemy field gun emplacement, taking a dozen prisoners in the process.
After the war Ben returned to his farm near Swift Current. The Depression years in Saskatchewan were brutal for farmers but I suspect he endured those hardships just as he had those on the battlefield.
I knew him for only a few short years after I came to Canada in the 1960s. He rarely talked about his war experiences but never hid his intense love for his adopted country, based largely on his admiration for the men who fought with him at Vimy Ridge, a battle that helped forge a distinct Canadian identity.
Major Ben Williams MC died without fanfare in the Shaughnessy Veterans Hospital in Vancouver in 1967. He will figure prominently in my thoughts on Remembrance Day, along with my other family members and countless others who served their respective countries in the past and those who are serving today in far off conflicts.
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