The Long Voyage Home

After the terrible battle at Falaise in August 1944, a Presbyterian padre in the Canadian Army had a deeply patriotic impulse. From a burned-out tank Major Robert Currie Creelman, M.B.E., took the bones and ashes of an unidentified Canadian, placed them in an urn, brought them home, planned a memorial shrine to all Canadian dead in World War II.

But after Creelman had sprinkled the soldier's ashes on the grounds of his church at Weston, Ont., the Army's principal Protestant chaplain, Colonel J. Logan-Vencta, and Brigadier Churchill Mann showed up, asked for the urn.

This week Major John Weir Foote, heroic "Padre X," who won a Victoria Cross at Dieppe (TIME, Feb. 25) was to sail from Halifax on a special mission: he would take the bones back with him to France, see them ceremoniously buried in a cemetery near Falaise. Said an official statement:

"[This] decision . . . is in keeping with announced Canadian policy that no remains of servicemen will be returned to Canada at either public or private expense --a decision based primarily on equality of treatment."

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