A story worth telling

Valerie Wilcox, Bristol Avenue, was good enough to mail me a story that should be told over and over. It was originally published yeas ago, by a friend, the late Harold Shea, when he was Editor-in-Chief of the Halifax Herald. Valerie turned it up when she discovered her father’s medals, as she looked through his things recently. He was a member of the West Nova Scotia Regiment and fought with the unit in Europe during WWII.

Take a trip out to the Anglican Cemetery on Bog Road (I think that name should be changed), enter the first gate and just about halfway along the path, there is a rough-edged granite stone, which bears a bronze copy of the West Nova Scotia Regimental badge. The stone was erected some years ago by former members of the WNSR in member of her father, Sergeant W. “Skip� McCarthy, who designed the badge but, because of a turn of fate, he was denied the chance to fight with the unit in its days of action during WWII. Skip McCarthy’s story is worth telling anytime, especially today, so near to Remembrance Day.

Skip lived on Waterloo Street, Liverpool, before the war, with his parents Mr. and Mrs. Burton McCarthy and brother Burton.

Times were tough, and people roamed from town to town looking for work. So, the McCarthy’s moved on to Bridgewater, where the father took a job as cook on the lightship Sambro and the mother operated the Acadia House, which was torn down many years ago.

Throughout his schooldays, Skip McCarthy showed promise as an artist. With the help of friends and family, he journeyed to New York to study art, and returned to Bridgewater to a Junior’s job in a bank in that town.

To supplement his income, he enlisted with the 75th Lunenburg Regiment, a militia force, which later was to merge with the 69th Annapolis, into the West Nova Scotia Regiment.

At the time of the merger in 1926, McCarthy, then a private, and 27 years old, drew the badge the unit was to wear with great distinction in WWII.

It was in that badge that McCarthy’s sense for symbolism and tradition really came to light. He drew a crown and a shield, superimposed upon an eight-point sunburst, representing the dawn.

Across the face of the shield, and dividing it into four triangles, he drew the Cross of Saint Andrew, taken from the Nova Scotia flag. The right and front segments contained a mayflower, the floral emblem of the province of Nova Scotia. The top triangle contained a replica of the Acadian church at Grand Pré, a connection with the Annapolis Valley Regiment, and at the bottom, a replica of the schooner, Bluenose, a symbol of the South Shore. Around the shield was a circular riband, bearing the words “West Nova Scotia Regiment� and their motto “Semper Fidelis�.

By 1938-39, scores of Nova Scotians, most hard-pressed for work, make their way to England to join the Manchester Regiment, Skip McCarthy among them.

When the West Novies arrived in Aldershot, England, in Dec. 1939, one of their first visitors was “Skip� McCarthy of the Manchesters.

There was some scuttlebutt that he might rejoin the unit, but the Manchesters were destined to go into action early, and so was the young banker from Nova Scotia.

He was taken as a Prisoner of War at Dunkirk, and spent the next four years as a POW, scrounging for food and living by his wits.

In 1945, his prison camp was overrun by the Allies and McCarthy was liberated. His body was weakened by the toughness of prison camp life and his lungs were damaged and he developed tuberculosis, but that did not stop him from walking from the camp, deep in Germany, to friendly Canadian and American lines in France. He was free to return to normal living, but he couldn’t — his health was too bad.

In 1947, two years after the end of the war, Francis “Skip� McCarthy died at age 38 at the Nova Scotia Sanatorium, in Kentville, NS.

On Remembrance Day each year, each of us should visit Skip’s grave in the Liverpool Anglican Church Cemetery on Bog Road. Say a prayer and wish that they had spelled his name correctly on the stone. They added an “a� which makes him “MacCarthy�.

Skip McCarthy, who gave his life for us and Canada, deserves better than that.