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Creston’s Ralph Heald has been given French’s highest award for his WWII service

Ralph Heald found speaking about his WWII experiences difficult until a successful application for the rank of Knighth of the French National Order of the Legion of Honour unleashed his memories.
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Ralph Heald points out some of the photographic mementoes that are featured on his den walls. The photo collage includes images from his World War II days as well as a photo that was taken on the day that Ralph golfed with NHL hall of famer Bobby Orr. Orr was in Creston to participate in a fundraising banquet for the construction of the Creston Valley Recreation Centre after the old one burned to the ground. (Photo credit Lorne Eckersley)

For more than 70 years Ralph Heald kept his memories from World War II locked up inside him. The once common nightmares gradually came further and further apart, but still wake him on occasion.

“You had one just a week or two ago,” Ralph’s wife Dorothy reminds him as he sits at their dining table and sifts through documents that he credits with helping him to unlock those often horrific memories and share them.

The documents are evidence of more than a year of working on an application to be awarded the rank of Knight of the French National Order of the Legion of Honour (France’s equivalent to the Order of Canada), and then waiting for the process to make its way through both Canadian and French bureaucracies.

Now 93, Ralph admits there was a sense of urgency while he waited. Most of his coffee pals are now gone, and the French award cannot be made posthumously. After learning that Legion of Honour medal was on its way, he really wanted to be able to wear it in a Remembrance Day service.

With a little prodding and a bit of luck, the application was successful and, two days before Remembrance Day the medal arrived by courier.

“When I answered the door and saw a young man holding package I knew what it was immediately,” Dorothy recalled. “I asked him if he knew what he was holding. He didn’t of course, and when I told him I thought he was going to cry.”

Remembrance Day ceremonies are not to be missed for the Royal Canadian Air Force veteran, but this one was extra special. Member of Parliament Wayne Stetski made a formal presentation at Royal Canadian Legion Branch 29 before the cenotaph service, and Ralph proudly wore the medal on his uniform. Appropriately, its place is just right over his heart.

A letter from Kareen Rispal, the Ambassador of France to Canada, explains that the Legion of Honour “is awarded in recognition of your personal involvement in the liberation of our country during World War II. Through you, France remembers the sacrifice of all of your compatriots who came to liberate French soil.”

Ralph Heald signed up for service in 1941, the only one of 21 candidates who made their way from Clive, Alberta to Edmonton to be accepted. When his superiors discovered he was only 17 they let him stay, but he wasn’t formally brought into the RCAF until his 18th birthday.

His dream of becoming a pilot ended early when eye tests revealed he had astigmatism. Eventually, he trained as a wireless operator at Calgary Tech and was shipped overseas to England and Scotland, then across the English Channel. He saw action in Belgium, France, Holland and Germany before VE Day.

“When the war in Europe ended they gave us an alternative,” he said. “We could stay on for two years as part of the occupying force, or go home for a short leave and then go on to the Pacific, where the war was still going on.”

He chose the latter option, but couldn’t get a flight back to Canada. His ship docked in Halifax and he was on his way home when word came that the war was over.

“Our choice then was to stay in the RCAF or be discharged and remain in the Reserve,” Ralph said. “My mother really wanted me to leave the Air Force, so I did.”

“I never talked about my war experiences until now,” he admits.

“When we first met (12 years ago) he didn’t speak about it,” Dorothy said. “But eventually I just insisted, ‘Ralph, talk to me.’ And he hasn’t shut up since!”

After preparing his application for the Medal of Honour, which involved submitting information about his war-time postings in France, Ralph went on to put together a paper outlining his memories as a young Canadian in the last Great War.

“I know the kids (his children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren) are happy that they have this information,” he said.

In the week after Remembrance Day he shared a vivid memory from when the war in Europe was nearly over. His squadron, with two others, had made an airstrip on a farmer’s field near the Danish-German border. The planes from two squadrons were readied for takeoff early one morning, but had to wait until the icy field warmed up. Ralph was inside a plane working on a radio when a sudden roar signaled the arrival of dozens of German planes, flying low under the radar.

“I jumped out of the plane and into a small trench as they started shooting.”

Caught unaware, only one Allies plane was able to take off. It shot down one German plane before it took a hit and crashed.

“I ran for a concrete shelter and when I got around to the entrance I saw that side was completely blown out. Men were trying to scramble into a sewer to avoid being killed. I dived into a larger trench, and remember looking up at German planes, which the pilots tilted sideways so they could look down for survivors.”

He recalls thinking that he should have stayed in bed that morning. But when he eventually got back to his squadron’s living quarters, with beds and pillows they filled with straw, he found his bed had been strafed with bullets. In his den, he pulls out the coarse blanket that he saved as a memento of his good fortune. It is filled with bullet holes.

Another memory persists.

“At first I felt bad that I couldn’t be part of the air crew,” he recalls. “But pretty near all the air crew in my squadron were killed. All the time I was in France we only had one pilot who finished his tour. Then he got back to England and was killed in a crash.”

Ralph and Dorothy Heald look back on the 2017 Remembrance Day ceremonies with special fondness.

“I am very happy with the way the crowds in recent years have been growing,” Ralph says.

“And it was so wonderful that they brought the children’s choir in—it was awesome. Lest we forget,” Dorothy says. Remembrance Day is very special. We can’t forget.”