Lieutenant Colonel (Ernest) Roy Pellant CD

 

  

 

Lieutenant Colonel Roy Pellant passed away peacefully November 22, 2008 in hospital at the age of 89.  Roy was born June 21, 1919 in Vancouver , BC the only son of Ernest Hubert Pellant and Edith Mary Herring.  He earned his bachelors degree at U.B.C. and worked as a teacher in Creston , BC .  Roy married Elizabeth Margaret Learmonth in 1942, and shortly after went off to defend his country as an officer in WWII. 

 

According to some of the information, he was originally accepted for Officer Candidate training by the Seaforth Highlanders.  On completion of his training he was sent to England as a replacement Officer, intending to join the Seaforths in action.  Because of a greater need he was transferred into the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry in Italy .

 

During that time he was captured by the Germans in Italy , and spent 482 days as a prisoner of war.  Most of his Reserve service was with the 43rd HAA/MAA and he finished his Reserve career promoted to Lieutenant Colonel.  Upon his return from Europe, he and Marg and their 3 year old son established their home in North Vancouver, and he began a successful career in personnel, first with the City of Vancouver, and then with CP Air where he advanced to the position of Director, Management Development.  He participated in the 1968 HRH The Duke of Edinburgh’s Third Commonwealth Study Conference in Australia , and stayed involved with the conferences over the years, including acting as Regional Executive Secretary for the Canadian Conference in 1980.  He and Marg enjoyed many wonderful adventures traveling the world together and with friends throughout the years.   He was predeceased by his beloved wife in 2003, and has missed her ever since.  His last few years have been spent enjoying his great-grandchildren.  Roy will be lovingly remembered by his son Dodd Pellant (Lucinda), his grandchildren Cindy Dopson (Shane), Aaron Pellant (Nina) and their mother Lucille Wright (Doug Little), and his 4 great-grandchildren.

 

The memorial service - 10:00 am on Saturday, November 29^th, 2008 in the Arbor Chapel at Valley View Funeral Home, 14660 – 72^nd Avenue , Surrey . B.C.  604-596-8866.

 

The following article appeared in the North Shore News recently:

 

Proud to serve by land, air and sea:

North Shore veterans recall their Second World War experiences

Rosalind Duane

rduane@nsnews.com

A few frayed cords barely hold the tired spine in place as it struggles to keep the well-worn pages together, but it's worth the effort.

The unassuming cover reads simply A Wartime Log, but inside North Vancouver veteran Roy Pellant's book are memories of the people and places he experienced during the Second World War.

The scrapbook was a gift he received from the Red Cross and he carried it with him through his service with the infantry and later his incarceration in a German prison camp.

The pages are filled with descriptions, musings, favourite poems and hand-drawn escape maps and cartoons.

Pellant points out the long list of names and addresses of the men he shared space with at the prison camp, and when asked why he collected that information he says simply: so people would know they were there.

Pellant was a student at UBC when the war broke out while he was in his last year of a BA program. He was planning on becoming a teacher, but enlisted with the Canadian army in 1940 at the age of 21. He was a product of the officer training program and was sent to England before being shipped out to North Africa . He was only there a few weeks before the German effort in Africa fell and so he was sent to Italy to join the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry out of Alberta .

However, Pellant notes that he wanted to transfer into the Seaforth Highlanders because they were from Vancouver , but he never got the chance.

In Italy for a short time, Pellant was leading a three-man reconnaissance along a shoreline bank when he was knocked unconscious by a grenade. German troops were lined up on the other side of the bank and easily took the three-man crew. Pellant says he woke up to find a small group of enemy soldiers looking down at him. They hadn't shot him because one of the Germans wanted the leather jacket he was wearing, but when the soldiers removed Pellant's leather jacket they noticed the two "pips" on his shoulder.

The rank insignia denoted his officer status as a lieutenant so the Germans decided to take him back to their base for questioning.

He still doesn't know what happened to the other two soldiers he was with at the time he was captured.

Pellant was in jail for a few days before being loaded onto a train bound for a prisoner-of-war camp in Slovakia . He shared the cramped train car with 60 other men for the two-day journey and says it got gamey pretty quickly.

When the Russian forces got too close to the German camp, the prisoners were relocated to West Germany , where Pellant says they were held in converted army training barracks that was fairly comfortable compared to their previous location. Some of the soldiers he shared the prison barracks with had already been there for many years.

Pellant spent a year and half imprisoned in the camp, where the captured soldiers received a care package from the Red Cross each week that contained various items, including books. What the captured soldiers really wanted though was food, says Pellant, noting that most meals consisted of just a few spoonfuls. There were a lot of potatoes, he adds, but meat was scarce.

One of the detailed drawings in Pellant's log shows the eight two-deck bunks that filled his room, which housed 16 men. He notes that they had a radio hidden in the wall of the room because the Germans were always searching for radios to confiscate.

"We got pretty good at hiding them," says Pellant.

When asked how the war ended for him, Pellant answers, "When the Americans came by with half a dozen tanks one day and opened the gate."

The fate of the failing German war effort was becoming clear in the days leading up to the arrival of the Americans, and Pellant says German guards at the prison camp were just walking away from their posts, heading home. Pellant joined the Canadian and British soldiers who packed up what little they had left and walked out of the camp, but not before raiding their captors' administrative offices. Before he left, Pellant snatched the file the Germans had on him, and his memorial log now contains the prisoner photo and card the Germans had on file.

After walking for two days, Pellant arrived at a landing strip in Brussels where he waited with a large crowd of other former prisoners for a plane to England .

Many years later, Pellant was sifting through a pile of postcards and photos at a store when he came across a picture of a group of soldiers gathered on a field. He quickly recognized himself among the group and realized someone had taken a picture of the prisoners waiting for their plane trip to England .

That black-and-white photo now holds a special place in Pellant's memory book.

Although he hadn't looked at his book for many years, Pellant easily remembers the details of every entry in it, and when asked what his favourite part is he answers, "I'm rather proud of the whole damn thing."