NEWS AND VIEWS: The story of Filip Konowal and his Victoria Cross (09/05/04)

NEWS AND VIEWS

The story of Filip Konowal and his Victoria Cross

by Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk

Too many of their grave markers are inscribed "Known unto God," placed over whatever remains could be salvaged into boneyards. Many thousands of others were taken in a flash, one moment present - alive, young, brave or not, doing their duty - then exploded into morsels, composted into the roiling battlefields of the Somme, Vimy Ridge, Ypres. When I was a boy those were places I was told we must remember. Today they are mostly forgotten.

It was called The Great War for Civilization. I have sought to know more about one of its soldiers, Cpl. Filip Konowal. For his valor during the Battle of Hill 70, he received the Victoria Cross, presented by His Majesty King George V who remarked that Konowal's exploits were among the most daring and heroic in the history of his army.

Today Konowal's Victoria Cross is being returned to its rightful owners, the people of Canada. Until this spring some claimed it was only misplaced, would yet be uncovered in the War Museum's collections. In truth, it had been stolen. How else could it end up at public auction? Who took it, when, where has it been? We don't know, for the RCMP is not laying criminal charges, is providing no public explanation. No matter, perhaps, for Konowal's VC was recovered, with verve, and will reappear in the new Canadian War Museum, a centerpiece in its World War I gallery, finally where it belongs.

But much still remains only "Known Unto God." Unscathed despite several days of close-quarter combat, dispatching 16 enemy soldiers with bayonet and grenades, Konowal was severely wounded by a sniper, on August 22, 1917, having exposed himself above the parapet wall. Suicidal, as every seasoned soldier knew. Ivan Ackery was a stretcher-bearer who took Konowal out of the line that day. Decades later he wrote how intense shelling forced Konowal's rescuers to dig a funkhole for shelter in a slag heap. There they huddled for about an hour as, in heavily accented English, Konowal kept crying: "I killed 'em, keed! I kill 'em." Ackery admitted he didn't really care what Konowal had done. He just wanted to keep the wounded corporal quiet and low, so they wouldn't all get shot. He and his mate knew if they survived until the barrage lifted and got to their aid station, a tunnel on the Lens-Arras Road, "we kids would be given a chocolate bar and a drink of pop, and our mouths were watering in anticipation. Not very heroic, our motive, but we were just regular kids, and treats were few and far between." A true tale about how war recast the Dominion's boys into warriors.

Despite disfigurement, Konowal's fighting was not over. He was assigned as military liaison to the Imperial Russian Embassy in London just as the Bolsheviks struggled to impose themselves throughout the collapsing tsarist empire. Officially taken on strength by the Canadian Forestry Corps, Konowal failed to show up. Inquiring what he was up to, the corps was told bluntly by the Chief of the General Staff to mind its own business. Konowal was held back for two weeks. We do not know why.

With the Canadian Siberian Expeditionary Force, Konowal went out to battle against the Reds, from October 1918 to June 1919, from Vladivostock to Omsk. Did he try to return to Ukraine? Perhaps, but he never made it. The Allied Intervention failed and he was repatriated to Canada, having served overseas for three years and 357 days.

He was a hero then, and honored. He led the Peace Parade through Ottawa's streets to Parliament Hill, on Saturday, July 19, 1919. But his descent began the next evening, in Hull, where he killed Wasyl Artich, reportedly a petty criminal and bootlegger who attacked Konowal's friend, Leonti Diedek. Afterwards Konowal did not flee. Questioned by Constables at the scene, he incriminatingly, if cryptically, said: "I've killed 52 of them, that makes it the 53rd."

During his trial counsel advised he plead "not guilty" by reason of insanity. He was so found and held in Montreal's St. Jean de Dieu Hospital, an asylum he shared with one of Quebec's great poets, Emile Nelligan. Intriguingly, following inquiries in August 1926 by Soviet officials, who possibly requested his deportation, Konowal was spirited off to a facility in Bordeaux, away from Montreal, released several years later, during the Great Depression.

He became destitute, was cut off from his wife, Anna, who perished during the Great Famine, and from his daughter, Maria, forever lost to him. Stoic, humble, he somehow overcame these blows. He married a French-Canadian widow, Juliette Leduc-Auger, cared for her two sons and invalid brother, making ends meet as a House of Commons janitor. He returned to Europe only once, in June 1956 for the 100th Victoria Cross anniversary. In a photograph of Canadian VC winners he is seated front row center - a hero among heroes.

Konowal passed away in 1959 and was laid to rest in Ottawa's Notre Dame Cemetery, near Prime Minister Sir Wilfrid Laurier, a good man who opposed the internment and disenfranchisement of Ukrainians as "enemy aliens." Fittingly, Konowal's record bears a final notation: "died in service." He did. And his true story was buried with him, likely to remain forever unknown, save to God.

Lubomyr Luciuk is a professor of political geography at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario.

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