LangleyAdvance
Gearing up pg A12
Your community newspaper since 1931
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Your source for local sports, news, weather, and entertainment: www.langleyadvance.com
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Military history
Flag heralds new Legion
Bill Holliday and a well-traveled Canadian flag led a parade from the old Langley Legion location to the new one Sunday afternoon. Highest Price Paid for Gold!
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Bill Holliday proudly carried a Canadian flag rich with history during Sunday’s unveiling of the new Langley Legion location. The Second World War veteran was among those who held the flag in Europe in 1995 for the 50th anniversary celebrations marking the end of the Second World War. Mists of rain fell on Holliday and parade participants as they marched west along 56th Avenue, from the Legion’s former location on Eastleigh Crescent. The parade was followed by speeches, a ribbon cutting involving the Legion’s oldest members Alex Myscouth and Mary Bruhaug, and refreshments inside the Legion’s new building. The local Legion has now moved to 20570 56th Ave., two blocks west of the site it had called home since ground broke in 1947. The flag was front and centre during the weekend ceremony, as it was from April 26 to May 10, 1995, when it was taken on a tour retracing the liberation route of the Canadian Forces in Northwest Europe during the Second World War. It is now in a display cabinet at the Langley Legion. Holliday has a long history with the local Legion, and with the military. Serving from 1944, the year before the Second World War ended, to 1948, he joined the British army at 18 years old. Holliday went through base training as an infantryman – a driver/gunner of an armoured fighting vehicle. He transferred to REME (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) and trained to recover armoured fighting vehicles. “My job was to pick stuff up from the front lines. I was take the flag with us,” Troy Landreville/Langley Advance the recovery guy,” he Holliday said. “We first told the Advance when Led by an RCMP cruiser, a parade of veteran and opened it up when we he was profiled in arrived in England, Legion members made their way along 56th Avenue 2006 [Concentration and after that we Sunday afternoon. camp witness caught the ferry from remembers]. “I would pull tanks out of Plymouth to D-Day.” ditches, or pull them off the road and out of The flag travelled through France, Belgium, the way. Some of them hit a mine, some of and the Netherlands. them broke down, that sort of thing.” It visited sites including the Dieppe and When the anniversary came about, local Agadem Canadian war cemeteries, and was veterans went to Europe for the occasion. part of the Apeldoorn 50th Anniversary “We decided to get a brand new flag, and Parade in the Netherlands.
Second World War veteran Bill Holliday (foreground) carried the Canadian flag that, back in 1995, was taken to Europe to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. Troy Landreville/Langley Advance
“The Navy guys held a service and laid a wreath on the ocean,” Holliday recalled. “It was quite emotional. Everybody got emotional, and were eager to see the places. The thing is, a lot of us were disappointed because we were looking for the places that are no longer there.” Holliday was in charge of the flag. He carried it himself, and then passed it on to others. “I carried the flag first,” he said. “Then after that I dedicated a good representative to carry the flag to every cemetery, every battle area… everywhere we had a parade, someone else carried that flag.” Holliday served as sergeant-at-arms for the Langley Legion for 20 years and is now going on 85 years of age. He said he was honoured to once again hold the flag high as he led the parade down 56th. “I was a bit wobbly on the feet,” he said. “But I survived it.”
Vancouver Police investigate RCMP-involved shooting in Langley… pg A3