D–Day vet attends Mansfield Cenotaph service

November 14, 2013 · 0 Comments

The wartime story of Vernon Eiberson might be similar in some respects to that of many farm boys who misrepresented their age to join the fray, except perhaps for the broad variety of the ways in which he served.

Mr. Eiberson, 87, is the father of Jane Hawkins, the president of Mansfield Women’s Institute. He and his second wife, Lucy, attended Remembrance Day services at the hamlet’s Cenotaph Monday, largely because they had been impressed by the restoration the Institute had completed last year.

He was one of four brothers to serve in the war. A fifth brother remained on the family farm.

The saga of his early wartime experience might seem a bit improbable. Somehow, he had been able to enlist in 1943 when he was a scant 15 years old. Destined for the armoured corps, he competed his common-to-arms (boot camp) in his native New Brunswick, and then trained on the tanks at Camp Borden.

In the meantime, an anti-tank regiment in 1940 had brought discredit upon itself by abandoning its towed guns at Dunkirk for the evacuation. That unit, he said, was remobilized as the 56th Battery – but Mr. Eiberson didn’t clarify whether that was of the Royal Artillery or the Royal Regiment of Canadian Artillery.

In any event, the revamped unit retooled into self-propelled guns but, as might have been expected, had a severe shortage of trained drivers for the tank-like guns. Mr. Eiberson was by late 1943 a well trained tanker, so he was voluntarily transferred to self-propelled anti-tank artillery presumably, he thought, as a trainer.

Instead, he was among the anti-tank guns in the second wave into Juno on D-Day as a battery of the Corps, and not specifically attached to the Canadian Third Division. He was lucky to make it ashore as No.1 gun off the landing craft. Gun No. 2 was hit by enemy fire, and its crew died.

For those unaware, the self-propelled guns look generally like a tank but are more lightly armoured and have open turrets. As an aside, Canada’s last casualty of the Second World War was Wilfred Berry of Shelburne, a tanker who had opened his turret and was driver through a town in Holland after the war had officially ended. He was shot by a German sniper. The street where he died has been renamed Wilfred Berry Stradt.

Anyway, Mr. Eiberson’s regiment advanced from Juno to assist in the closing of the Falaise Gap, the escape route of the retreating German army – of which, later, Major General Richard Rohmer, formerly of Mono, wrote extensively. He had flown reconnaissance and had viewed the retreat from the air.

From Falaise, Mr. Eiberson’s unit swung westward toward the coast – thence through Belgium and Holland.

Combat veterans don’t usually relish talking about combat experiences except, perhaps, with others who have shared the horrors. But they will talk about memorable events apart from the gore. That’s understandable. By some estimates, the average life expectancy for an infantry platoon commander under actual fire might be 20 minutes.

So, what was one of his most memorable experiences for discussion? Mr. Eiberson says his unit was sent to Nijmegen, Holland, close to the border with Germany. This was the oldest city in the Netherlands at 2,000 years and arguably the most strategic.

There, his unit captured a German ammo dump and a brewery. I joked that the brewery would have been the best part of the operation. “No,” he said. “It was the worst. “We were trying to get (the beer) out without anyone knowing.”

Apart from that, his unit dispensed chocolate to the children before it was sent to support the Americans in the Battle of the Bulge. From that mission they returned to Holland to support the Canadian Second Division in the final liberation.

Mr. Eiberson continued to serve the guns for the duration. On return to Canada, he and his comrades landed at Halifax where the Red Cross served coffee and donuts, but charged for the snacks.

From Halifax, they went to Sackville, N.B., where the unit was demobilized.

But it wasn’t long before Mr. Eiberson re-enlisted, this time in the Royal Canadian Engineers. There, he said, he took “course after course,” became an engineer instructor including an 11-month posting to Washington, D.C.

His final posting before retirement was to London, ON, where he was assigned as the regular force senior Non Commissioned Officer for the cadets.

Throughout his long and varied service, Mr. Eiberson was not offered a commission; not until he was ready for retirement, when he was commissioned as a lieutenant covering a captain’s vacancy. He surmised he was promoted from warrant officer so he would be subject to recall for 20 years.

By Wes Keller