A Second World War vet, a Korean War vet and the Royal Canadian Legion president are among those celebrating a milestone with the Legion.
Marg Beever, Bernie Cluff and Bob Penner received service pins from the veterans’ organization at the local branch’s Remembrance Day Banquet held this past Saturday, Nov. 8.
Beever, who served Canada during the Second World War, and Cluff, who went to Korea, each have 60 years of service with the Legion. Penner, the branch president, now has 40 years of service.
Beever is among the Flin Flon area’s few remaining veterans of the last great war. In 2010, she shared with The Reminder the story of her service.
Though she was never deployed overseas, she served Canada on the domestic front for the closing two and a half years of the conflict.
Having grown up in Wheatland, Man., northwest of Brandon, Beever was no stranger to the aura of military service. Nearby Rivers was home to a Royal Canadian Air Force base, complete with the renowned No. 1 Air Navigation School.
As soon as she was 18, she did what thousands of other patriotic Canadians of the era did – she signed up to serve.
Men tend to get the bulk of the credit for Canada’s valiant effort in the war. But women took on many vital, unheralded tasks, serving as drivers, pilots, nurses, mechanics and aides.
Young and energetic, Beever ventured to Winnipeg to join the army. After basic training, she signed up to be a driver.
“I took my driving test and everything in Winnipeg and before they let me know anything, they shipped me off to Vancouver,” she said. “So I never did get to be a driver, but I worked in army stores.”
In Vancouver, Beever spent her days packing up military items and equipment. It was important work considering she was freeing up one more serviceman (or woman) for overseas missions.
“I would have liked to have gone overseas,” she said. “Before the end of the war, I did sign up, but then the war ended.”
One of Beever’s most potent memories stems from time she spent in Shaughnessy Hospital, having broken a bone in her foot after accidentally tipping over a machine.
“I was in the hospital the same time as the Japanese prisoners of war came home,” she said. “And I think back about this one man who was 50 pounds and cried and screamed all night. They were just coming home and they were starved.”
Those kinds of experiences made Beever welcome the formal conclusion of the war in 1945 – and she was hardly alone.
“The streets were wild in Vancouver,” she recalled.
In the months following the war, Beever stuck with the army. After she was discharged in June 1946, she returned to Rivers and worked odd jobs.
It wasn’t long before she and her husband, the late Hank Beever, relocated to Flin Flon, where he found work at Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting (now Hudbay).
Marg became active in the Legion and later took a job at Willowvale Grocery, which would be her employer for some three decades.
