Telegram September 5, 1944 to Marie Odjick:
Minister of National Defence deeply regrets to inform you that C52889 Private Bail Alias Odjick has been officially killed in action twenty-eight August 1944 STOP If any further information becomes available it will be forwarded as soon as possible STOP (Source: Janique Odjick)
Background:
Basil Odjick was twenty-three years old when he decided to join his older brother Robert in the Canadian army, who had enlisted six months earlier. Basil left his lumberjack job at Maniwaki one day in February of 1944, said goodbye to his pregnant wife, Marie, and their two young children, Hector Joseph 4, and Katie Ilda 3. He took the train to Ottawa and then on to Kingston, where he enlisted. He wrote his will the next day and left everything to his wife. He took his basic training at Farnham, Quebec. On June 27, 1944, he requested a transfer to Kingston Ontario to join his older brother. After the casualties suffered during the Great War, where brothers fought and died in the same unit and whole family lines with them, this request was denied. According to family, Basil felt close to his older brother because they had been through residential school together from 1927 to 1936 when they were both under 10 years old.
Basil sailed from Halifax on July 12, 1944, and landed at Liverpool, England on July 19, 1944. Robert landed in England sixteen days earlier, but the two brothers where not destined to meet again because Basil received orders to sail for France August 12, 1944. Three days later he was posted to the Royal Regiment of Canada holding the line outside the French city of Falaise to cut off the German Army's retreat from Normandy. At nights, they watched as Allied bombers dropped hundreds of tons of bombs and incendiaries into the trapped Germans.
On August 26, 1944, Paris was liberated. The German army in Normandy retreated across the Seine River to make a last stand. To the Royal Regiment of Canada went the unfortunate honour of participating in the last battle of the Normandy campaign. On August 28, 1944, the Royal Regiment of Canada was ordered to outflank the retreating Germans at a French village called St. Ouen-de-Tilleul, just on the outskirts of Paris, St. Ouen-de-Tilleul was defeated by a detachment of German SS troops armed with rocket launchers and ant-tank guns. The Royals pushed the SS out of St. Ouen-de-Tilleul that afternoon. Thirteen Canadian soldiers where killed in the street fighting, including Basil. A German shell or rocket exploded against a building, which sent masonry and brisk hunting in all directions. A brick smashed into Basil's steel helmet, fracturing his skull. He died instantly.
In 1949, the villagers St. Ouen-de-Tilleul erected a memorial to the thirteen Canadian soldiers who died liberating their village five years earlier.
Fallen
