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from Toronto
Star Thursday 25 May 2000
Unknown soldier to rest in Ottawa
Moved from French grave as
national symbol
By Valerie Lawton
Toronto Star Ottawa Bureau
OTTAWA - A soldier buried in a
grave near Vimy Ridge for more than 80 years is coming home today to
become a symbol of those who have given their lives fighting for Canada.
Canada's unknown soldier will be
honoured at a solemn ceremony in France before being flown to Ottawa.
Ernest ``Smokey'' Smith, a World
War II veteran accompanying the remains back to Canada, said it will be an
emotional day.
"We've been working on it for
years, the veterans have,'' he said in an interview from France.
"We should bring him home, and
we have.''
Smith, 86, is one of just two
living Canadians who hold the Victoria Cross, the Commonwealth's most
revered honour, for his extraordinary bravery as a young private who held
back German forces at the Savio River in Italy.
He'd like the Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier to honour the many Canadian heroes who have never been properly
recognized.
"Everybody doesn't end up a
Victoria Cross winner like me,'' said Smith, who ran a Vancouver travel
agency until his retirement only a few years ago.
"There're other people who did
just as many things and fought in just as many battles. They were all very
brave, yet they got no recognition. I'm lucky.''
The fact no one knows who the
soldier was will help make that point, Smith hopes.
"He might have been a great
man. He might have done great things for the Canadian public, but nobody
knows about it.''
Smith was also part of Canadian
contingent at a military funeral at Pozières, France, yesterday for a
Canadian whose body had been hidden under a French field since 1916.
Canada's unknown soldier will lie
in state in the Hall of Honour on Parliament Hill until Sunday, when his
remains will be buried with military honours under the huge arch of the
National War Memorial in downtown Ottawa.
The inscription on his sarcophagus
will read simply: "The Unknown Soldier, Le Soldat Inconnu.''
The Royal Canadian Legion has led
the effort to create the memorial.
The legion's Bob Butt said it
didn't take long to settle on the idea that the unknown soldier should
come from the burial grounds around Vimy Ridge.
"That was specifically because
of the historical meaning for Canada of the battle of Vimy Ridge,'' Butt
said.
More than 3,500 Canadians died
taking Vimy Ridge from the Germans in 1917. Efforts by British and French
forces earlier in World War I had failed, and historians often point to
the victory as Canada's coming of age.
Canada has promised the
Commonwealth War Graves Commission that it will never try to identify the
remains, which have been removed from the Cabaret-Rouge cemetery near Vimy
Ridge.
"By leaving the remains as an
unknown, then anyone who lost a loved one in the war, who went away and
did not come back and has no known grave, they can take consolation
perhaps that it is theirs,'' said Dan Wheeldon, who heads the commission's
Canadian office.
A couple of years ago, genetic
testing removed the mystery about an American soldier who died in the
Vietnam War and had been laid to rest in the Tomb of the Unknowns at
Arlington National Cemetery.
The Commonwealth War Graves
Commission looks after the graves of 1.7 million war dead, including about
110,000 Canadians who have died in a war during the 20th century.
More than 27,500 Canadian war dead
have no known grave.
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