A former Windsor-area soldier who served in Afghanistan will head to Europe with 11 other Canadians on a tour of First and Second World War battlefields.
Bruce Moncur, who served with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan and was seriously injured in a 2006, was selected for the Canadian Battlefields Foundation 2013 study tour and will head to France on Friday for three weeks.
“I was pretty surprised and really happy,” said Moncur, who just finished a degree in history at the University of Windsor. “I’m a history buff. I love history, anything history.”
The three-week trip, which is for university students who want to learn more about Canada’s role in the liberation of Europe, includes visits to Ypres, the Somme, Vimy, Dieppe, and the Normandy battlefields.
As part of the trip, Moncur is researching the battle of Passchendaele and a Canadian soldier from Nova Scotia named John Bernard Croak who was awarded the Victoria Cross for his bravery in the battle at Amiens in 1918.
“There’s forgotten people that are still part of Canada’s past that you wouldn’t know if you didn’t do a trip like this,” Moncur said.
The 1917 battle of Passchendaele in Belgium was a very frustrating one for the Canadian forces, he said, because as allies, Canadian soldiers had to follow British orders and lost thousands of their own in the fighting. At the same time, Canada’s identity separate from the British was starting to emerge. “It’s such a pivotal time in our history,” he said.
The Canadian corps captured the village of Passchendaele in November 1917, keeping that part of Belgium from falling in to enemy hands.
The trip will also be Moncur’s first official trip to Europe’s historical battlefields. When he was injured in Afghanistan, he was sent to Germany for brain surgery at the Canadian military hospital, but wasn’t able to see the rest of the continent.
Moncur, who was serving in the Essex and Kent Scottish Regiment at the time, was badly hurt in the southern Afghan province of Panjwaii when American soldiers mistakenly fired on NATO troops, mistaking them for Taliban insurgents.
After his surgeries, Moncur had to re-learn basic living skills, such as writing, and his doctor recommended he go back to school.
Now that he has finished his undergraduate degree Moncur said he is considering graduate school, but first, he wanted to apply for this trip and “see where it takes me.”
And while he did serve in the military in Afghanistan, he said, the First and Second World Wars are even more meaningful to him because soldiers there were fighting for the freedom that Canadians enjoy today.
The Canadian Battlefields Foundation is an educational foundation that runs programs to commemorate and educate Canadians about Canada’s role in the World Wars and other 20th century wars.
bfantoni@windsorstar.com or Twitter.com/bfantoni
