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7

Here and There with a Hasty Pee

The Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, an infantry unit of Canada’s First Division was assembled primarily from men who joined up from the farming area, backwoods, and small towns of the two Ontario counties. Among them was Robert Bate of Bowanville, an employee of the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company who served six years with the Hasty Pees.

Early in the war, leaves and humorous incidents punctuated the routine and discomfort. But then Sergeant R. Bate was catapulted into the hard-fought Italian campaign and faced the red-hot reality of front-line fighting. In common with so many combat soldiers, the ability to appreciate the lighter side of a deadly serious job never deserted him.

Shortly after enlistment he heard the story about two Hasty Pee men of 1939 who had climbed to the roof of a Picton canning factory-turned barracks to take down an imposing pewter figure of an Indian Chief. Thought to be a likeness of Tecumseh, the firm’s trademark weighed in at 500 pounds and stood over eight feet tall. Adopted immediately as regimental mascot, Little Chief was within forty-eight hours on his way to Halifax with the overseas bound detachment. When the men fastened him to the prow of the troopship Ormonde, Little Chief was an impressive figure-head with his spear in one hand and his tomahawk in the other. From England the Hasty Pees and their mascot sailed to Brest in June 1940. After travelling 200 miles inland by train they were forced to return to the French coast. Little Chief had gone along with the transport section who at that point were ordered to damage, destroy and abandon vehicles and equipment. What should they do with the mascot? Because of his size and weight they wrapped him in groundsheets and buried him – with the intention of retrieving him later. Although several efforts were made to locate Little Chief after the war, he remains Missing in Action.

“Little Chief”, mascot of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment in England, March 1943.

Back in Canada the Second Battalion commissioned Abe Patterson of Pembroke to carve a proud new 500 pound mascot. Named Chief Petawawa-Much, he was assigned the number C.0001 and shipped overseas to the First Battalion in England.

Meanwhile in Picton, Bob Bate and a couple of friends had made plans to provide the new Chief with a mate.

“We’d noticed a statue of an Indian maiden standing on a pile of rocks outside a summer resort place on the road between Belleville and Trenton. We figured that she could go overseas with the next draft. Ours. One night three of us drove over there in my car, cut her down with pliers, took her back to Picton and left her in the Officers Mess. When we moved to Camp Borden she was crated up and went on the train with us. But by then some newspaperman had got hold of the story and her photo appeared in the Picton paper. Her owner demanded six hundred dollars or her return. We’d have had trouble scraping together six hundred cents right then so our plan fizzled and she was taken back to her pile of rocks.”

Ex-Sergeant Bate still chuckles at the memory of a startling trick once played on a sergeant-major ‘who was always after us’. The object – ‘to shake him up a bit!’. In Possingworth Park, Sussex, the sergeant-major’s quarters were in a quonset hut. One night the troublemakers began their lark by first fixing props against the outside of his hut door, a bag was put over the chimney and smoke quickly filled the hut. When a window was thrown up, they immediately threw a thunderflash in and there was a loud explosion. Thunderflashes were harmless but the explosion resembled the sound of a dangerous hand-grenade going off. The well-executed prank was a shaker alright, and the penalty came the next day when the battalion was ordered out on a forced march. Not a favourite pastime, even for infantrymen.

A youthful Farley Mowat would join the Hasty Pees in Italy. Bob Bate was Orderly Sergeant of the Day to Farley Mowat’s Orderly Officer of the Day when they met for the first time.

“I went to the door of the Officers Mess and asked for Lieutenant Mowat. When he appeared, I thought to myself, God! What are they sending us now – Schoolboys?”.

Four dispatch riders of the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment in England.

Later, they had been fighting in the battle for Ortona and were withdrawn for what was termed a rest.

“Every forty-eight hours our trucks would go back down to Company HQ for rations. This particular night they’d arrived back and the lead truck had parked outside my tent. Early in the morning I woke to a strange scratching noise. I found it was coming from the back of that truck. And what was scuffling about in there but a live turkey! I hollered up the driver, ‘Where the devil’d you get that bird?.’ He gave me some story about finding it on his way back to camp. ‘Well, you’d better do something about it before they come round on inspection’ I told him. So he set about killing it, burying feathers, etc. and then cut it up. We found a cooking pot and looked forward to a good feed.

“About 10 a.m. I was sitting there by the fire we’d made when the Orderly Officer, Lieutenant Mowat, and the sergeant came by.

“‘What’s in the pot, sergeant?’

“‘Beef sir. It came up with the rations last night.’

“It seemed to satisfy them but they were still looking around as they walked away. Then Lt. Mowat spoke again.

‘Let me know if you hear of anyone finding a turkey. The officers were supposed to have one for dinner today and it disappeared in the night.’

“So there I was. Sitting right next to the pot containing the bird in question. Wings, legs, and all. And lying about it, too. I was glad when that damned turkey was eaten.”

Sergeant Bate entered a barn in Italy where several Hasty Pees were sheltering. One, Ted Sheehan, was wounded and had been placed in a manger. Bate walked over and quipped “Playing Jesus, eh” and remembers how it caused the man to smile through his pain.

His active soldiering came to an end when be became a casualty of war in Italy on 4 December 1943. The regiment was moving up toward the Lamone River and Bob Bate is convinced that he had two distinct but inexplicable warnings of danger.

“From the first I had a definite uneasiness about the move. I just didn’t like the feel of it. But orders were orders.

“There were no bridges left across the river so we were to cross in canvas boats carrying piat guns and mines with us. The PIATS (Projector Infantry Anti-Tanks) would be set in position and beyond them, the mines would blow as track vehicles came on, and then the PIATS would get a crack at them.

“But the enemy caught on and we found ourselves in the middle of an artillery barrage. My runner and I lay facing the canal. Suddenly something told me – quite clearly – ‘Turn around and get your feet towards the water’. I turned. And told Termite Kehoe to do the same. We protected our heads the best we could with our steel helmets. Then there was this blinding flash and we were hit.

“Now your army manual emphasized that you should never turn your back on the enemy but if I hadn’t turned around I’d have got it through the neck. Likely my head would have been severed. What was the voice? Call it God, instinct, sixth sense, whatever you like. I definitely heard it. And because I obeyed it, I stayed alive.”

Robert Bate’s right leg, between knee and ankle, had been shattered by shrapnel.

Back in Canada, he would spend from 18 April 1945 until 27 June 1946 undergoing seven operations and numerous grafts at the old hospital on Christie Street in Toronto. He expressed gratitude and admiration for the nursing and medical staff at the time. The long period of treatment and convalescence was made more bearable for him by the fun happenings, often instigated by the servicemen themselves. Bate believes that the staff also benefitted from the larks and goodnatured ribbing because the doctors and nurses were under considerable strain caring for young men suffering from horrible war wounds.

“On 22 December 1945 Farley Mowat and his father came to the hospital. We talked for a while and suddenly Farley said, in that way of his, ‘Want a firecracker?’ Now, I’d known about a few things he’d got up to in the past and I was curious about any firecracker he was offering. Sure, I wanted one. So he produced something that looked exactly like a big firecracker, complete with wick. At the time I was forced to stay in a strange position with one hand fixed to my lower leg for the grafting. Farley put the firecracker under the bedclothes and they left. I managed to work the outer wrapping off with my feet. That firecracker was firewater. A bottle of Haig and Haig.