100-year-old veteran is believed to be the last surviving Riley from the Second World War
I never expected to live this long," the Second World War veteran says in a matter-of-fact voice. I worked hard. And I partied hard."
Corp. Stewart Bray, who served with the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry during an overseas tour of duty more than 75 years ago, also survived an exploding mine that severely injured his foot in September 1944 near Bergues in northern France.
It was six months before I could walk on it. They did a great job of patching it up. For a while they were talking about taking my foot off," he says.
And yet, here he is in the winter of 2022, with some aches from age and military service, but remarkably lucid and in reasonably good health, talking on the phone from a seniors' home in Oshawa.
I recently interviewed Bray after the milestones of his 100th birthday in October and him becoming the last known Riley survivor from the war," after the death of fellow RHLI vet Carl Kolonsky in late November at the age of 96.
Tim Fletcher, a retired captain and RHLI historian, says that Bray is the only living Riley veteran that the regiment knows about from as many as 5,000 Rileys who served in the war.
Maybe there are others, perhaps quietly tucked away in nursing homes, but suffice to say that Bray is among the last of the Greatest Generation" that stood up to Nazi Germany and the other Axis powers three-quarters of century ago.
He is part of a fading flicker of living memory from the last global war. And he is one of the only people who can still talk about it.
Bray, who grew up on a farm in Raglan, north of Oshawa, enlisted in January 1943 in Toronto. He later transferred to the Rileys, a regiment that desperately needed new recruits because of severe losses at the disastrous raid of Dieppe six months before.
A total of 197 RHLI soldiers were killed and 174 became prisoners of war in the controversial Aug. 19, 1942, attack on the German-held seaport town in France.
Of the 580 Rileys who took part - as part of contingent of nearly 5,000 Canadian soldiers from numerous regiments - none are known to be alive today.
The last of the Dieppe RHLI soldiers, - Ken Curry, 97 - died in April 2020. In Dieppe, he was captured by the Germans and spent the rest of the war as a prisoner before returning home. Curry last made it to the annual memorial service at the Dieppe Veterans Memorial Park on the Beach strip in Hamilton in August 2019.
Bray says he remembers all those years ago being brought under the Riley wing. The RHLI is where they stuck me and I am glad they did," he said. We were the reinforcements that built the regiment back up after Dieppe. We were all new recruits."
Bray recalls arriving in Dieppe on Sept. 1, 1944, with the Rileys as part of the 2nd Canadian Division, to finally liberate the seaport town. But by then, three months after D-Day - and two years after the failed raid - the Germans had abandoned the area and the Allied troops were greeted with cheers and jubilation by the French townspeople.
We stayed there for five days. That was our first break in two months. We paraded through town six men abreast," he said.
Those days in Dieppe came after months of bitter fighting through Normandy and further into France. Bray arrived in Normandy in July 1944.
His worst day was Sept. 15 - less than two weeks after the Dieppe liberation - in a field near Bergues.
The troops were making plans to blow a hole through a wall that circled the town, and he was marching across a field in single file with numerous soldiers in front of him.
Nobody told me there were mines there. It just happened," he said. All of sudden - bang. It knocked me right off the ground. And it knocked the guy down behind me."
He managed to make it to a nearby road where he found a jeep. With his leg sprawled on the hood, the jeep ended up in a ditch.
Finally, an ambulance arrived to take him on a 20-hour long journey to a tent hospital.
It was the happiest day of my life when I made it to the tent hospital. It was the first time in a bed for six months."
He never returned to active service.
I spent 11 months in and out of hospitals and eight months in the Christie Street Hospital in Toronto," he says in notes he prepared to describe his experience.
He got married in hospital to June and they lived together for 73 years in the Port Perry area until her death in 2018. They had seven children.
He was a longtime shipping department employee of GM and for many years travelled to Hamilton for RHLI veteran reunion events.
Factbox head
The RHLI at a glance
- The regiment traces back to the 13th Battalion formed in 1862 by industrialist and politician Isaac Buchanan, who is also known for having built the still-standing Auchmar mansion on Hamilton Mountain.
- The RHLI today operates out of the John Weir Foote V.C. Armoury on James Street North.
- The first military engagement and casualties by the regiment took place in Ridgeway in June 1866 against attacking Fenians from the U.S.
- Since then, the Rileys fought in both World Wars and numerous other military and peacekeeping missions.
- It's estimated that between 1,100 and 1,200 Rileys died in both First and Second World Wars and other military campaigns.
The Argylls
- The other main regiment in Hamilton is the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders. According to Argyll historian Robert Fraser, there are two known surviving Second World War veterans from the regiment. One is 97 years old in Montreal and the other, of similar age, is in long term care in Nepean, outside of Ottawa.