Local WWII veteran honours fallen comrades
Corporal Charlie MacNeill, who came to Bowen in 1946, stands outside BICS after a remembrance assembly there last year.
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Updated: November 06, 2009 8:37 AM
It is time to remember those who served. At the ceremonies put on by the Bowen Island Legion on Nov. 11, at the cenotaph in Snug Cove there will be an islander who served in the Second World War – and who has been to every ceremony there since moving to Bowen 63 years ago.
Cpl. Charlie MacNeill, from Prince Edward Island, initially joined the P.E.I. Highlanders but his company was transferred over to the North Nova Scotia Highlanders and it was with that regiment MacNeill went to Europe with and saw action.
Records show the regiment took part in the Normandy Landing and fought with distinction in over a dozen other engagements.
The 92-year-old former infantryman has not been back to Europe since coming home after serving his two and a half years in the war and his having not returned is by design.
“I lost a lot of friends over there and some of them are still there and I don’t ever wanna go back.” MacNeill told The Undercurrent over the phone last Wednesday. “In the army you become a family and when one of them is missing it’s worse than pulling a tooth out.”
He went on to say he admired the British citizens and in particular the women in London and in other cities who endured years of the bombings and poor rations, adding that if he went back to London he wouldn’t recognize it anyway.
“If I went back I’d have to ask the city of London to put the lights out ‘cause I’ve never seen London with the lights on,” he joked, referring to the years of blackouts meant to hamper German bombers.
The well-known islander came to Bowen in 1946 after leaving the army.
He went to work as a logger in B.C., becoming a heavy machine operator, working for decades operating bulldozers and cats and other heavy equipment.
He helped build the Legion with 16 other veterans, recalling the year as being “around 1969,” and he said that back then there was over 100 members of Branch No. 150 here on Bowen who had served in either the First or the Second World Wars.
He found it a comfort to have so many on island who had similar experiences to him, soldiers he came to know, but he said those men are gone now.
Nairn Knipe, past president of the Legion, said earlier this week that the cenotaph on Bowen was erected in about 1936 and added that there has been a ceremony there every year since then.
She said this year’s Nov. 11 ceremony starts at 10:30 a.m. and they work to have it over by the time the 11:30 a.m. ferry goes.
There will be groups placing wreaths for the fallen, the community choir will sing and local girl guides will be there.
The ceremony will be officiated by Reverend Shelagh McKinnon of the United Church and after it’s over Knipe says “everyone is invited to the Legion for soup and sandwiches.”
MacNeill said he will likely also go along to a Remembrance Day Assembly at BICS that he is invited to attend each year, this year it is on Tuesday, Nov. 10 at 10:45 a.m. The BICS assembly will feature poems and presentations created by students and the entire community is invited.
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