Another witness to the Nazi Germany assault that rocked the world in the 1940s died last week.
Ernest William Wood, a Second World War veteran, passed away Oct. 19 at the age of 94.
He leaves behind one son, five grandchildren, 10 great-grandchildren and four great-great grandchildren and a sister.
A memorial Service will be held Oct. 27, at 10:30 a.m. at the Westlock Funeral Chapel
Current Westlock Royal Canadian Legion Branch 97 president Dave Linsley said Wood’s legacy is one of service — not only to his country, but to the community.
“Ernest was a super-guy,” said Linsley. “He was very involved with the Legion all his life. He was a 71-year member.
“He was always at the Legion. He would come down for coffee every morning, and he came to everything that we held. He came to all our suppers, all our luncheons, without fail.”
Wood was born Sept. 14, 1922 at the Edmonton Misericordia Hospital and grew up the oldest of five on a farm in Westlock.
When Wood was 11, he adopted a pet bear named “Joe,” who hung around the house and was fed scraps.
“If you couldn’t see him anywhere, (I’d yell) ‘Hey Joe, where the hell are you?’ and he’d come around the corner and see what we wanted,” Wood recalled in a video memory project filmed by production company Memory Catcher last year.
After two years, Joe grew too big and rough when he played, so Wood brought him to a game farm near Vimy.
“I was always going to sit him down and ask him about his bear, but I never did get the full story,” added Linsley.
At 18, as war ravaged Europe, Wood enlisted in the army’s Medical Corps, and later the Service Corps, to help out his relatives in England.
The war brought him to Germany, France, Belgium and Holland, where he met his wife Ann, a member of the underground resistance movement.
On June 6, 1944, Wood’s ship landed on the beaches of France. The boat was quickly assaulted by gunfire on the shore. Of the 32 men who left the boat, only seven made it to land.
He survived and in 1946, he was discharged from the army and returned home to Westlock, where he continued to give back to the community.
Wood kept himself occupied with a number of roles in the town, from special constable, volunteer firefighter, plumbing inspector, police officer, public works staffer, and licensing officer, in addition to running a machine shop.
His community work continued long into his old age, committing 70 years of volunteering to the Legion.
In 2014, he received France’s highest level of recognition, the National Order of the Legion of Honour (L’ordre national de la Légion d’honneur) of the Chevalier (Knight) ranking, for his involvement in D-Day and work with the French army and the underground resistance.
“But I can’t talk about those at all,” Wood told the Westlock News upon receiving the medal on Nov. 11, 2014.
“We were sworn to a lifetime of secrecy of things we saw.”
As recently as Jan. 6, he was the recipient of the Rotary Club’s Paul Harris Fellow recognition award.
•With files from Eric Bowling
