The following story about Donald Ross was submitted by his daughter, Elora resident Donna Ross. It was part of a larger article written by her aunt (Don’s sister), Georgina Matthews, that appeared in a 2001 issue of Canadian Military History.
Lieutenant Donald A. Ross joined the Canadian Grenadier Guards in Montreal in the early years of the Second World War. After training at Farnham, Quebec, and Camp Borden, Ontario, he left for England on Sept. 12, 1942.
On July 24, 1944 his unit – the 4th Armoured Brigade, 4th Canadian Armoured Division – embarked for Normandy. It was deployed by Aug. 5.
One morning the doorbell rang at the family’s Montreal home. “Dad slowly opened the official-looking envelope. We waited almost breathless. Would it be, ‘We regret to inform you … ?’ Matthews wrote. “No, the dreaded News was that Don had been wounded on Aug. 11. With a deep sigh I whispered, ‘Thank goodness, now he will be out of the fighting.’ Mother’s eyes brimmed with tears; dad looked heavenwards in prayerful thanks.”
For weeks the family waited for News; for some details of Ross’ wounds. In mid-September a letter arrived in which Ross told his family his leg was “a bit painful” but would be “fine.” The family was miffed by the lack of details and by Ross’ estimate that he would be spending “four to six months” in hospital.
“One sorrowful day News came his left leg had been amputated because gangrene had developed,” Matthews wrote. “I realized mother’s anguish as she had to accept the brutality of that wound to her adored firstborn.”
Weeks went by with little update on Ross’ condition but the family remained hopeful he would return to Montreal by Christmas. “At last a notice in the Newspaper: a Red Cross ship had docked in Halifax with soldiers invalided home, and the train carrying Montreal-bound men would arrive on Dec. 22. What excitement ensued!” Matthews wrote.
“No one who was there that desperately cold midnight of 1944 will ever forget the sight of hundreds of soldiers streaming down the walkways, on stretchers, on crutches, with empty sleeves, with empty trouser legs fastened high, all purposefully making their way towards us. Don was one of those on crutches, one leg missing. We signalled to him excitedly and at last caught his eye, and, in a crush of people and as he grasped his crutches tightly he was embraced first by (his wife) Mary Lou, then by dad, then by me.”
Years later, in 1991, Ross, accompanied by one of his sons, returned to the Normandy battlefields. Standing on Hill 195, which was his regiment’s objective of Aug. 10-11, 1944 … “he talked of his tank being hit and of being catapulted out of it,” Matthews explained.
“As it burned he returned to check for a missing crew member. Bob Osbourne, badly injured and helpless, was still inside. Hauling him out, Don hoisted him to his back, and as the tank exploded, he himself was struck by shrapnel. One of his crew crawled forward and dragged him to the cover of a shallow ditch, where he lay for nearly four hours before he and Osbourne were picked up.
“For the rest of his life, every year on the anniversary of that battle, Osbourne sent a note of gratitude to Don, and, once a pen and ink sketch of their tank Giraffe in flames and a wounded man being carried on another’s back away from the inferno.”
The drawing was so important to Ross that he always kept it on his bedroom dresser.
Lieutenant Donald Ross died on July 10, 1992.
