COMMENTARY: A look at the difficult life of World War I hero Konowal (09/04/05)

COMMENTARY

A look at the difficult life of World War I hero Konowal

by Lubomyr Luciuk

We should not romanticize him. His life was often hard, even brutal. An immigrant to Canada in 1913, he left a wife and daughter at home. He could not have known that he would never see either again. His wife, Anna, starved during the genocidal Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine. Their daughter, Maria, was trapped forever behind the Iron Curtain.

Konowal began working in British Columbia's forestry industry, later moving to the Ottawa Valley. When war broke out he volunteered. By a quirk of geopolitical good luck, he had been born east of the river Zbruch, so he was a citizen of the Russian Empire, an ally, instead of an "enemy alien" from Austro-Hungarian lands. He enlisted in the army on July 12, 1915. Meanwhile, thousands of his fellow Ukrainians were interned, forced to do heavy labor in Canadian concentration camps and disenfranchised, not because of anything they did but only because of who they were, where they came from.

Transported overseas with the 77th battalion, Konowal embarked for France on August 31, 1916, as a lance corporal reassigned to the 47th Battalion. Severe diarrhea kept him out of the fighting through February and March 1917, but he was back for Vimy Ridge. And his luck held until August 23, when he again found himself in a Casualty Clearing Station with gunshot wounds to the face and neck. A sniper gave him his "blighty" - wounds acute enough to take him out of the front lines, to a hospital in England.

Just before he was shot, Konowal became a Canadian hero. His valor during the Battle for Hill 70 earned him the highest military distinction of the British Empire, the Victoria Cross, presented by King George V. The November 23, 1917, issue of the London Gazette recorded why No. 144039 was so deserving:

"For most conspicuous bravery and leadership in charge of a section in attack. His section had the difficult task of mopping up cellars, craters and machine-gun emplacements. Under his able direction all resistance was overcome successfully, and heavy casualties inflicted on the enemy. In one cellar he himself bayoneted three enemy and attacked single-handed seven others in a crater, killing them all.

"On reaching the objective, a machine gun was holding up the right flank, causing many casualties. Cpl. Konowal rushed forward and entered the emplacement, killed the crew and brought the gun back to our lines.

"The next day he again attacked single-handed another machine-gun emplacement, killed three of the crew, and destroyed the gun and emplacement with explosives.

"This non-commissioned officer alone killed at least 16 of the enemy, and during the two days' actual fighting carried on continuously his good work until severely wounded."

Cpl. Konowal would soldier for three years and 357 days. Yet, misfortune awaited him. In Ottawa, July 19, 1919, he led the Peace Parade. The next day in Hull he killed Wasyl Artich, reportedly a petty criminal and bootlegger who attacked Konowal's friend, Leonti Diedek. Questioned why he had done it Konowal said simply: "I've killed 52 of them, that makes it the 53rd." Found not guilty by reason of insanity, he was confined to Montreal's Saint Jean de Dieu Hospital, an asylum he'd share with Quebec's greatest poet, Emile Nelligan.

By the time he was discharged, Ukraine was firmly within Stalin's grasp. There was no way home. So, like many veterans, Konowal found himself unemployed, destitute. Slowly he rebuilt a life, marrying a French-Canadian widow, Juliette Leduc-Auger, adopting her family as his own, earning his keep as a Parliament Hill janitor. He died in 1959. After his burial, in Ottawa's Notre Dame Cemetery, he was all but forgotten. Even his Victoria Cross was stolen.

Then Branch 360 of the Royal Canadian Legion got cracking. They and their friends placed four trilingual markers honoring Konowal across Canada. In 2000 they erected a statue in his village of Kutkivchi, Ukraine. And, largely thanks to them, Konowal's long-missing VC was recovered in 2004, secure and on permanent exhibit within the Canadian War Museum. And now a last plaque has been unveiled - in Lens - concluding this decade long-effort to hallow Konowal and, along with him, all the Canadian soldiers who, more than 90 years ago, went to France, many to remain there forever, having paid the ultimate sacrifice in the "Great War For Civilization."

Fittingly, this project was completed in Canada's Year of the Veteran and yet, ironically, just a few weeks ago, Branch 360 was shut down by the Royal Canadian Legion's Ontario Command, ostensibly for "not doing legion work." We might ask what "doing legion work" means. Our hero certainly would have. For he was proud to be Branch 360's honorary president.

Prof. Lubomyr Luciuk represented Branch 360 and the Ukrainian Canadian community at the unveiling of the plaque honoring Filip Konowal in Lens, France, on August 22.

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