Yukoners help war history preservation project

Photo by Whitehorse Star

Several veterans of the Second World War who reside in the Yukon turned out last week at the High Country Inn to take part in a national project aimed at preserving personal histories of those involved in the global conflict.

Among them were David Smith, a gunner aboard H.M.C.S. Micmac, a tribal class destroyer in the Canadian Navy, and Alex Van Bibber, who spent two years as an infantryman.

Both Smith and Van Bibber brought keepsakes – old uniforms, medals of commendation, photographs – and recounted their experiences for The Memory Project: Stories of the Second World War, an initiative of the Historica Dominion Institute and Heritage Canada, which stopped in Whitehorse as part of a cross-country tour.

While the Second World War began in 1939 and would stretch over six years, Smith was not old enough to enlist until 1943. At around the same time Smith joined the Navy, Van Bibber was assisting the U.S. Army by scouting a pipeline route from Norman Wells to Whitehorse.

When then-prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King begrudgingly enacted conscription to bolster Canadian forces battling in Europe in 1944, the well-known Yukoner answered the call.

“I knew it was coming; a lot of my buddies were called up and a lot of young guys went from Dawson, a lot of guys that I was working with,” Van Bibber said.

With basic training behind him, Van Bibber and his regiment prepared to ship out to Europe but an outbreak of mumps resulted in several weeks of quarantine in Halifax.

And this quarantine exercise replayed itself for Van Bibber, who, by the time he was certified healthy and ready for active duty, the war was winding down in Europe and his combat services there were no longer required.

So Van Bibber was shipped back across the country to Vancouver, where Canadian forces were massing to join American allies in the Pacific theatre.

The Japanese military was continuing its fierce resistance, and again, Van Bibber waited to be thrust into the conflict. But when the Americans dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, the Japanese surrendered and the war was over.

“Maybe it was a good thing we didn’t go to Japan. I had a guy tell me he was in a Japanese prison camp for four years… he said they treated him awful for four years,” said Van Bibber. “And there was no way he could get in touch with his wife, write letters.”

Throughout what must have seemed an endless preparation to Van Bibber and other soldiers in his midst, Smith, aboard H.M.C.S. Micmac, was waiting for threats of a very different kind – German U-boats.

“We did (coastal) protection because the subs were coming into the shores of North America so we were trolling up and down the east coast hunting for them,” said Smith, who was then just 18 years old.

“And it was very stressful because those people were no dummies with their torpedoes and when they knew we were
up there, they’d just drop right down and sit there.”

Enduring daily bouts of seasickness, Smith and the crew of H.M.C.S. Micmac continued patrolling the east coast of the continent for more than one year, yet never engaged the enemy or fired a shot.

Like Van Bibber, Smith prepared to enter the Pacific theatre of war following Germany’s surrender in the spring of 1945.

“They asked you if you’d like to go (to fight in the Pacific) and I said, ‘Yeah, may as well,’” Smith recalled.

But H.M.C.S. Micmac’s services were not required, and Smith was demobilized in Vancouver before he had to face the fearsome kamikaze suicide pilots employed by a desperate Japanese army on the verge of defeat.

“They were still hanging on but then the Americans dropped the (atomic) bomb that finished the Pacific (war) so I didn’t have to go there, which is a good thing,” Smith said.

“Those kamikaze attacks were just unreal, and the Americans who ran into them, they had to learn how to handle them.”

Encouraged by his brother, Smith decided to try his luck in the Yukon, and the pair relocated to Dawson City.

Van Bibber returned home to the territory in 1946 after completing two years in the service. Following his discharge, he was rewarded a paltry $100 – enough for a new suit and travel expenses.

“The white soldiers, they got a parcel of Crown land and supplies to build homes – they got a little more out of it,” said Van Bibber, who assisted with a successful campaign for aboriginal veterans to receive a more equitable compensation.

“The aboriginal veterans raised heck about it and they settled it. What the government did is come up with $20,000 each.”

On three separate Remembrance Days, Van Bibber, 94, has laid the wreath for aboriginal veterans at the National War Memorial in Ottawa.