In the article In search of Canadian Trooper Henry George Johnston Part I: Missing in action, Gordon Krebs wrote about looking for the grave of Second World War Trooper Henry George Johnston -- his mother-in-law's father who served with the Canadian Kangaroos. On Jan. 17, 1945, Henry was en route from Sustern, Holland to Dieteren, when his company stopped for a rest break. The Germans found them, opened fire, and Henry was directly hit with a mortar shell and died. It appeared that Henry had been listed as missing in action (MIA), and as such he was believed to not have had a grave, but rather was memorialized on a wall at the Canadian War Cemetery in Groesbeek, Holland. Chance meetings along the way put Krebs and his wife Dennise in touch with a number of people including Bill Miller Jr., whose father Bill Miller Sr. had served with Henry and had been with him when he died.
As we left off Trooper Johnston’s story in September 2012, Henry’s family had been united with Bill Miller Sr.’s immediate family, namely Bill Miller Jr. This union led to Henry’s family accompanying Bill Jr. to several Canadian Kangaroo reunions in Toronto at Katz’s Diner where we met and were included in the “Kangaroo family”.
We felt very welcomed into this amazing group, and were honoured to represent Henry. We also attended several Remembrance Day ceremonies at the head of the Elgin Regiment in St. Thomas, Ontario. Through the persistent efforts of Bill Miller Jr., the Department of National Defense gave the Kangaroos a much overdue permanent home with the Elgins. At one of these ceremonies, Henry’s family were invited to a black tie dinner honouring the Kangaroos. The dinner was attended by royalty from Scotland.
May 2015
Henry’s family -- at this point still understanding that Henry was MIA -- decided to attend the 70th anniversary of VE Day in Holland on May 8, 2015. One of Henry’s surviving daughters (Ellen Rowe, my mother-in-law), her husband, and two of Henry’s granddaughters and myself travelled to Groesbeek, Holland and attended several ceremonies honouring Canada’s contribution to the liberation of Holland.
Again, here is where Bill Miller Jr. comes into the picture. Bill has a good friend in Holland, a historian named Ivo Wilms. Ivo is doing his master's thesis on a downed Canadian bomber from 1944, but has shown an interest in the Kangaroos also.
Bill tells Ivo of Henry’s family visit, so Ivo takes a week off of work to give us a personalized tour of the Kangaroo battlefield and other important military sites in southern Holland. Ivo gave us an incredible tour, spending three days taking us from battle site to battle site, including taking us to the very site where Henry was killed.
It was incredibly emotional to stand where Henry last stood. It may be hard for some people to understand how one can love someone you have never met and who died 70 years ago, and I would have been the first to scoff at such a notion, but I am here to tell you, the emotions were incredibly strong. Imagining what Henry gave up to give his family (including children he wouldn’t watch grow up, grandchildren and great-grandchildren he would never meet) freedom to choose and prosper rendered me speechless and a blubbering idiot.
To say the least, we had an amazing trip, learning more about Henry and also the entire Canadian effort in the First World War and the Second World War. We toured Vimy Ridge and Normandy, spent time at Ypes (Flanders Fields) and thoroughly enjoyed the people of Holland. We had made many new friends but still thought Henry was MIA.
Fall 2018
We are contacted by Ivo Wilms. He tells us that he has come to Canada on vacation and wondered if we would have a chance to reunite for a visit. Obviously, Henry’s family is very happy to hear from our old friend (I say old, but Ivo is a very young man, in his late 20s). We make arrangements to have him out for a reunion dinner.
Bill Miller Jr. accompanies Ivo to our home. When they arrive, we have a great reunion, reminiscing over Henry and our tour with Ivo. Ivo gets me alone and asks if I would go outside with him because he has something he wants to tell me. Very strange, but Ivo is such an amazing young man, that I readily agree.
The two of us go outside and Ivo begins to tear up saying that he hadn’t told us, but since our visit to Holland in 2015, Ivo and Bill have spent three years researching the events of Henry’s death. And they have now identified his grave!
Henry is no longer MIA, but after 73 years laying in a grave marked by a headstone identified as Unknown Canadian Soldier, Henry has been found.
Again, I’m a blubbering idiot. Not only because of Henry, but now I am thinking about the efforts of two young men (Ivo Wilms and Bill Miller Jr.) to provide closure for our family. No words can describe how grateful Henry’s family is to these two men.
The trail to find and identify Henry’s grave
Ivo was researching the archives near Baakhoven, Holland. This is the spot where Henry was killed. He found a photo showing four crosses marking four deaths that had occurred on January 17, 1945. At that time, the war was moving quickly, and the military, after identifying the dead, left the bodies to be buried by locals. Remember, Henry suffered a direct mortar hit, and it was decided that there was not enough left of his body to identify, so his remains were buried with no name on the cross marking his grave.
To add more confusion, the other three dead soldiers buried with Henry were British soldiers (the Canadian Kangaroos were transporting British troops at the time, so the locals assumed that Henry was also a British soldier). So Henry’s cross read “Unknown British Soldier”. Also, the locals put the date of burial (January 21, 1945) on the crosses rather than the date of death. Remember, they were locals, not military personnel and they were just doing the best they could to honour the dead.
After the end of the war, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission travelled around the battlefields and wherever Canadians were buried in local cemeteries, the bodies were exhumed and transported to one of several larger cemeteries filled strictly with Canadian soldiers.
When they dug up the four graves at Baakhoven, beside Henry’s body they found an identification bracelet belonging to Trooper Jake Dyck of Winnipeg, Canada. So now unknown soldier has been identified. However, when the War Graves Commission contacts Trooper Dyck’s family in Winnipeg, they are informed that Jake Dyck survived the war and is happily at home on the family farm in Manitoba. He was never even injured, let alone killed in Holland.
So now the WGC has another mystery. The body has been correctly identified as Canadian because of the identification bracelet and also because of uniform style and identifying shoulder patches found on the body. But who is it? Because it was a Canadian soldier, the body is re-interred at Mook Cemetery in Holland, with the headstone Unknown Canadian Soldier.
Until Ivo came along and found the photo of the four crosses at Baakhoven. Through persistent research, Ivo and Bill Jr. realize that the only unidentified Canadian soldier killed within two weeks of January 17, 1945 and 100 kilometres of Baakhoven was indeed Trooper Henry George Johnston of the Canadian Kangaroos. Now all that remained was to get the Canadian Department of National Defense and the Dutch War Graves Commission to agree with Ivo and Bill Jr.'s research.
We were informed in late 2018 that indeed their research was confirmed but were asked by the DD to keep a lid on things until the official press release came out. On Monday, November 2, 2020, the DD officially announced that the grave of a lost Canadian soldier has been identified. Henry will get his proper funeral and headstone identification.
The DD and WGC are not willing to dig up Henry’s remains to do DNA verification, and I don’t think anyone wants that to happen. If remains were discovered in someone’s field, such identification would be warranted, but by process of elimination, we all know that the body buried in Mook Cemetery in grave 3B3 belongs to our father, grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great-grandfather, a brave, honourable family man named Henry George Johnston.
It would have been very easy for so many people to give up on the search for Henry. Why did Bill Jr. spend 15 years looking for family members of a long dead friend of his father's (remember Bill Sr. carried the photo of Henry in his pocket till the day he died).
Why did my mother-in-law mention Henry to Dennise and I just before we left of Europe in 2012? Why did Dennise and I leave the sights of Paris to travel to Groesbeek? Why did Jan Screven offer to help Dennise find Henry at Groesbeek Cemetery? Why did the curators at the War Museum show so much interest to eventually hook me up with Bill Miller Jr. in Calgary Canada?
And the biggest why of all is why would two young men (Ivo Wilms and Bill Miller Jr.) devote such a big part of their lives to helping people they didn’t even know?
All these questions can be answered by the same reason that Trooper Henry George Johnston enlisted in the first place. They felt it was simply the right thing to do.
The very least we can do is to honour the selfless commitment all of these people made by remembering Trooper Henry George Johnston and the millions of others just like him. They sacrificed so much just so we could have a better life. Words are just words, but by remembering, we honour them.
Every time I am having a bad day, I think to myself, what I am going through is nothing compared to what Henry went through. I am hoping that he would be proud to be thought of and loved in such a way.
RIP Trooper Henry George Johnston…..you are loved every day.
Thank you, Bill Miller Jr. and Ivo Wilms.
Honoured to play a small part,
Gord Krebs
