Eighty years after his uncle Welby Patterson died on a European battlefield in the last days of World War II, Maidy Keir will see him recognized in a museum exhibition in the Netherlands in a way he had never returned home.
“I think it will be very emotional. I’ve always been very proud of him,” Keir said in his home in London, Ontario, surrounded by some of the artifacts he still has of his uncle’s time serving with the Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps.
“I was only 22 years old when he died. My father returned from the war, but his brother did not.”
Keir’s trip to Freedom Museum in Groesbeek, the Netherlands, took a bit of chance.
In November, Keir’s daughter was looking for Google for the name of Patterson to obtain information about the family hero before the day of the memory. He found a news about a Dutch researcher who hoped to connect with relatives of several indigenous soldiers who helped free his country. Patterson’s name was among them, and the family approached.
“They are our liberators. They released the country in which I have now been able to live, in La Libertad,” said Mathilde Roza, whose exhibition, called indigenous liberators: the first nations, Metis and the American native soldiers and the liberation of the Netherlands, World War II, will be revealed on May 1 in Groesbeek.
This year the 80th anniversary of the Dutch release of the Nazi occupation is fulfilled.
“This is part of Dutch history, and Canadian history and indigenous history. I hope to tell the story correctly and that they feel a sense of recognition, that their contribution is being recognized in a way that is gratifying them,” Raza said.
The touch exhibition presents the stories of 30 American native soldiers, first nations and methods that were involved in war efforts in the Netherlands or were finally buried here. Patterson is buried in the Holten Canadian War cemetery.
He has interviewed Keir, who will bring some of the records that his family still has of Patterson, including a telegram that informs the family that was injured and that the warning informed them about his death.
Nickname Pat by his last name, Patterson was very dear to his fellow soldiers, and his death was “feeling very felt his comrades,” he told his family.
“When Pat returned to this unit recently after his stay at the hospital and a service tour as an instructor in England, he volunteered to boost the company’s ambulance jeep. It was his work to follow the company in action and evacuate casualties,” reads the death notification letter.
“On April 14, 1945, the unit made an early attack in the morning against Frisoythe. Outside the city, it was necessary sniper and kill him and kill him. “
Patterson was buried in a temporary cemetery before being transferred to Holten. He won a military medal for his courage during a shooting in September 1944.
Patterson was born in six nations of the Grand River near Hamilton, a proud member of the Tuscarora people.
Keir grew in Moraviantown, near Thamesville. Keir is proud that indigenous veterans are being honored and grateful that the Dutch remember them so that Canadians are only beginning to remember. “I am very proud of my inheritance.
“Welby’s brothers and sisters have gone, but there is still this next generation and wanting to continue with this,” he said.
In the Netherlands, Rza was interested in the role played by indigenous soldiers during World War II.
“Almost all the soldiers that appear in the exhibition went to residential schools, and address the history of colonization and resistance they had in front of that,” he said.
