Dr. C.M. Johnston's Project

Kenner S. Arrell

Caledonia on the lower Grand River was the picturesque birthplace of Kenner Sawle Arrell. His family had been associated with that part of the river valley ever since his Irish-born grandfather, Samuel Arrell, had settled and married in the Big Creek area in the early 1860s. In 1885, after stints of farming and a series of unrewarding enterprises, he moved to Caledonia with his growing family, which by now included Kenner Arrell's father, Harrison. There Samuel opened what promised to be a more profitable line of work, a livery stable. The business obviously prospered because Harrison was able to train for the law, ultimately becoming Crown Attorney for Haldimand County, while his brothers successfully completed their respective studies at medical and veterinary schools and launched their own practices.

Meanwhile Harrison had married Eva Sawle, a local girl, and on 27 April 1919 their third and youngest son, Kenner was born, a brother for Alex and Hugh. He was named for his maternal uncle who had recently died serving in what that sorrowing generation called the Great War. The youngster attended the local primary school, did well academically, and in due course, as had his father before him, entered Caledonia High School. This sturdy brick building now houses an elementary school and still commands a pleasant view of the river and the bridge connecting the two sections of town. Kenner also received a potent education at home, centred largely on politics. Both his father and grandfather were staunch Conservatives and the dinner table had been the scene of lively discussions on the merits of Tories and the flaws of Grits for as long as a receptive Kenner could remember. It followed that the family was equally staunch in its allegiance to the Church of England (still very much, it would appear, the Tory party at prayer) and was scrupulously regular in its attendance at St. Paul's Anglican Church in Caledonia.

As one might expect, however, for Kenner Arrell it was not all school work, church attendance, and politics. The Grand River was often central to his life as well, playing an important social and recreational role during his boyhood and adolescence. In the summer there was endless swimming - sometimes in the deep dam a short distance outside town -- and skating in the winter. As one close friend recalled, however, Kenner's talents as a hockey player or as an athlete generally were not pronounced except perhaps on the tennis court. For social life beyond the river, he and his high school friends also had to rely on their own devices. The authoritarian principal of Caledonia High, Mr. ("Tommy John") Hicks, saw to that. He took a jaundiced view of extracurricular activities that smacked of the dubious and irrelevant and banned them from school premises. As a result, dances and socials had to be sought out at the town hall on the "Square" or arranged in private homes.

Other diversions included regular trips to Hagersville to catch a movie - Caledonia lacking the necessary venue - the trips undertaken in cars supplied by the moviegoers' obliging parents. For serious shopping and more up-to-date film entertainment Hamilton sometimes filled the breech. In any case, at no time apparently were Kenner and his circle of friends expected to take regular Saturday or after school jobs as so many of their urban contemporaries had to do in that day and age. Allowances for minor duties about the home and yard seemed to be the order of the day. This stood out in stark contrast to the heavy daily chores assigned their rural classmates.

Meanwhile, the diversions enjoyed by the town's adolescents had to share considerable time with academic commitments. Although the high school, like most such institutions, suffered financial and curricular cuts in the Depression 'thirties a fairly rigorous course of study, not to mention staff, was still in place to test and enhance the capabilities of Caledonia's student body. Again, from all accounts Kenner had little difficulty meeting the challenge and, as anticipated, he was honoured as valedictorian when his class graduated in 1936. There was no question that he would proceed further up the academic scale and in the fall of that year he enrolled at McMaster University, a Baptist institution which just six years before had conveniently uprooted itself from Toronto and relocated in nearby Hamilton. Significantly, on his admission application Kenner had listed the formidable and no-nonsense Caledonia principal, "Tommy John" Hicks, as his main referee.

When he arrived on campus freshman Arrell opted for the Honour Political Economy course (now simply Economics), the presumed gateway to the flourishing business career that he hoped to pursue. Although McMaster's Baptist regimen might have seemed reminiscent of Hicks' austere rule there were opportunities at the University that had been non-existent in Caledonia. For one thing, there was life in residence to be savoured, namely in Centre House of Edwards Hall, where Kenner learned new rituals of living and learning and struck up friendships with people from across the country. Before long he ventured into campus journalism, rising through the ranks to become the Business Manager of the prestigious Board of Publications, which was responsible for the weekly Silhouette, the McMaster Quarterly, the Marmor, the yearbook, and the Directory. During his tenure the Quarterly underwent an attractive facelift and aggressively sought more undergraduate literary contributions.

For his efforts Kenner was awarded the coveted "Honour M", bestowed on those who successfully combined exceptional academic and extracurricular accomplishments. He also polished his skills as a debater, exploiting his formidable wit and humour and his way with words, and won a special award in that field as well. Among other organizations, he joined and served as secretary-treasurer of, the Political Economy Club, which was in the midst of vigorously refurbishing its contacts with the business world. Kenner also took part in the rarefied sessions of the International Relations Club, which spent a good deal of its time solemnly addressing the growing crises in Europe and Asia. His social life and dancing were not neglected either though, reminiscent of Caledonia, much of it had to be pursued off campus in places like the popular Brant Inn in Burlington.

In his graduating year, the Marmor carried Kenner's "Obit" (for "obituary"), which was prepared by a friendly classmate, the practice of the time. Though rather strained and fractured, at least it was heartfelt and accurate enough:


When Kenner ultimately "conquered" by graduating BA in 1939 ominous war clouds were already gathering on the horizon. Even so, with as much cheer and hope as he could muster he was determined to pursue a business career, and specifically in accountancy. He shortly enrolled in the appropriate course at the University of Toronto and deploying his customary talents achieved exemplary results. Under wartime regulations introduced in 1940 he was also required to serve in the university's Canadian Officers' Training Corps. He passed through it successfully and in late January 1942 was attached as a 2nd lieutenant to a militia unit, the 2nd Battalion of the Queen's Own Rifles of Canada.

While completing his accountancy course Kenner appears, according to some sources, to have joined the chartered accountancy firm of Clarkson, Gordon, Dilworth & Nash. (If that was in fact the case the Dilworth on the masthead was another McMaster alumnus who may have played a part in Kenner's supposed appointment.) Yet when he formally enlisted in the active army in June 1942 he gave no indication that he was gainfully employed anywhere, simply stating on his declaration paper that he was a "Chartered Accountant Student". In any event, he was about to emulate his brother Hugh's earlier commitment to army service.

It was a fateful month of overseas military triumphs, setbacks, and uncertainties in which to join up. To be sure, the tide-turning Battle of Midway had just been fought and won by the Americans in the Pacific but the titanic Battle of Stalingrad was looming on the Eastern Front with every prospect that the Germans would win it and put the Soviet Union out of the war. And in Egypt, Britain's beleaguered 8th Army was fighting with its back to the wall to protect the strategic Suez Canal, its victorious comeback at El Alamein still months in the future. For its part, the Battle of the Atlantic was still a major problem as the seemingly unconquerable U-boat continued to harass the shipping lanes upon which Britain's survival depended.

At the outset, Kenner's own life would be less dramatic in the unit he joined as a 2nd lieutenant, the 3rd Battalion of the Queen's Own Rifles. That life involved training sessions first at pre-Shavian Niagara-on-the-Lake and then at Aldershot, Nova Scotia, where in early December 1942 he was posted to an infantry training course. He managed it successfully and as a result was promoted 1st lieutenant on 15 January 1943. After enjoying two short leaves to bid adieu to family and friends, he was assigned in early March to No. 1 Embarkation Transit Camp at Debert, Nova Scotia. His days in Canada were numbered. But he gave no indication of this in a letter
he wrote at this time to close Caledonia friends, Kenneth and Kate Berscht, whom he had visited on his last leave. Rather he lightheartedly assured them that he was not entirely deprived of the social life he had enjoyed as a civilian. "It's been very pleasant here …", he disclosed, "-- several dances and a couple of mess dinners helped pass the evening. The girls from Truro do very well. One of the lads playing in our band says he sees the same girls in a different mess almost every night".

Not long after this letter was written - on 27 March 1943 - Kenner and his regiment were dispatched to England. They landed safely on 4 April, reported for duty the next day, and then embarked on further training exercises. Kenner still had time, however, to write his friends. With the characteristic humour they enjoyed, he remarked in May 1943 that the "Queen didn't seem surprised to see me in London a couple of weeks ago - probably Mackenzie King [Canada's Liberal Prime Minister] told her to expect me". "I'm just debating", he added, "whether to develop an Oxford accent or the Cockney accent - sort of Anthony Eden or Ernest Bevin idea". "Strangely enough", he ended wistfully, "they seem to want us to learn how to fight all the time - gives one little opportunity of seeing the country". But he did have the opportunity to meet up with his brother Hugh, a fellow army officer who before the war had served in a local militia regiment, the Dufferin and Haldimand Rifles. He was now on active service with the Royal Hamilton Light Infantry, the unit that had been bloodied in the Dieppe Raid of August 1942.

While in England Kenner was transferred to the 48th Highlanders of Canada, and on 30 June 1943 assigned to the Canadian Army, "M" (Mediterranean) and dispatched to Tunisia. There Canadian units like his would be attached to the British 8th Army, which in conjunction with American forces had recently eliminated the Axis threat in North Africa. A liberated Tunisia was now being readied as a springboard for the invasion of Sicily, planned for 11 July 1943. Indeed Kenner disembarked at a "North African port" a mere day after Allied ground and airborne troops, backed by a massive naval flotilla, "re-entered Europe" by forcing their way onto the island. By early August he too was in that "Field" of operations and had already experienced his own baptism of fire.

In the last week of the month, as enemy defenses crumbled in Sicily, Kenner was assigned to a Follow-up Unit that served as backing for the troops about to invade the Italian mainland across the Strait of Messina. On 24 September he was formally "taken on strength" by the 48th Highlanders on the newly opened Italian front. Then in October he was dispatched as a replacement officer to the front line position occupied by the 4th Battalion of the 48th in the Moro River area of central Italy. The soldier detailed to pick Kenner up and transport him to the scene turned out to be a fellow Caledonian, Corporal Angus Bain. Neither had known the other while growing up along the Grand River, the one a farm boy, the other a "townie", a social division that marked many an Ontario rural community at that time.

The 48th Highlanders, like other Canadian units, had been fully engaged in the bitterly fought and hard-slogging Italian campaign leading up to the Moro River operation. It also raged over endlessly unforgiving terrain. One regimental veteran recalled that it was "like fighting uphill all the time" as he and his comrades had pushed northward through the Apennine range. The struggle against a resourceful and dogged enemy who made full use of these natural defences consumed many lives and months. And to add to the anguish and discomfort of the living, food and sleep were invariably in short supply. Besides the actual fighting and all that that entailed there was often hard manual labour to boot, and sometimes under fire. "We were making a diversion one day", Kenner typically reported, "the Germans having blown [a] bridge, and … we sweated away [clearing] rocks". Obviously he pitched in and shared the heavy work with his men.

In spite of his own military commitments and his participation in the fighting, Kenner managed to keep in touch with matters that had long absorbed him - politics and economics. His Conservative loyalties notwithstanding, he showed a more than grudging admiration for Mackenzie King's war policies, at least on the home front: "an A1 job - production and price control better managed than in the States and finance at least as well done as in England". Kenner may have been aware that one of his former mentors at McMaster, Professor Kenneth Taylor, was now serving with King's Wartime Prices and Trade Board, the agency principally responsible for the achievements he extolled. Indeed, the war and its implications may have been modifying his political views across the board. At one point he even saw a future for the left-wing C.C.F. (Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, forerunner of the New Democratic Party) if the "Old Line" parties failed to give Canada "a proper lead" after the war.

Kenner was less flattering, however, when it came to sizing up Italy and the Italians and their Fascist dictator, Benito Mussolini, whom he dismissively referred to as "Musso". He was firmly convinced that "Democratic government is impossible in Southern Italy until the people are better educated. I can't believe the people I've seen are up to choosing their own government". Representing a generation that would have been mystified, especially in the circumstances of war, by later notions of political correctness, he acidly noted that while southern Italy was "a lovely country to look at" it was "terrible to live in - much like living in a barn yard". He added that many Italians, after their country's surrender and switch to the Allied side, were now eager "to stand on their status as 'co-belligerents' without of course doing any fighting", a judgment feelingly shared by his men. What Kenner and his platoon did not know, however, was that Italian partisans, many of whom had suffered under the Fascist regime for their socialist or communist sympathies, would give a good account of themselves against the Germans in northern Italy.

In the closing days of November 1943, after some two months spent in action with the 48th Highlanders, Kenner came down with jaundice, a common complaint among both officers and men, particularly among the wounded. He was shipped first to a field ambulance and then to a general hospital in the rear. In these welcome new quarters Kenner enjoyed a comfortable though brief respite from the fighting. "Present civilization may be decadent", he told the Berschts in a letter dated 1 December, "but it's wonderful to decay like this in solid comfort". There was only one form of decadence that this non-drinker spurned: "the monthly ration of Scotch which [nonetheless] I had to pay for". With tongue-in-cheek he also revealed that he had turned a "definite yellow which has an ominous sound … for a fighting soldier".

After recovering and returning to the regiment on 10 December 1943, Kenner was again in the thick of the action, particularly in the operation known as "Morning Glory" in which the 48th Highlanders played the leading role. Following an intense set-piece artillery barrage, the operation commenced on 18 December near the village of San Tomasso. It was designed to pave the way for a break-through and ultimately an attack on the German positions at Ortona, an ancient fortress town on central Italy's east coast. "[T]he big picture", as a Canadian historian who served in Italy remarked, "is made of … little ones [and] many operations of war, related in a few casual sentences are all full of noise and horror, valour and death". And so it would be in this case. Thanks to a compelling regimental history, DILEAS, and the acute memories of Angus Bain, the last hours of Kenner Arrell can be reconstructed.

On 26 December 1943 both Kenner and Angus took part in an attack on a farm house defended by German paratroopers, who invariably, in the words of one historian, fought like "disciplined demons". After a "most effective" barrage laid down by Sherman tanks - to quote the regimental war diary --the Highlanders, led by Lieutenant Kenner Arrell, pistol in hand, charged the house. After bloody hand to hand fighting they drove many of the German defenders into a gulley, at which point other troops moved in to mop up. The Highlanders had scored an impressive victory. Many of the enemy were killed in the firefight - referred to in the war diary as "quite a slaughter" -- leading a front line padre to dub the place "Cemetery Hill" after their burial. It had been done speedily to reduce the stench and danger of contagion that always stalks a battlefield.

Although the Highlanders' casualties were comparatively light both Kenner and Angus were among the wounded. Indeed Kenner suffered a crippling abdominal wound that led to his death the next day, 27 December 1943 -- like his namesake uncle in another war, at age 24. For the part he played in the engagement he was posthumously mentioned in dispatches. Eventually all of this was reported in the pages of the McMaster Alumni News. Angus Bain, who would recover to fight another day, get wounded again, and in the process be mentioned in dispatches too, ended his war as a sergeant. He deserves the last word. "My section was helping to support [Kenner's] position", he wrote home to his parents. "… He never showed any fear and his men would follow him anywhere".

Kenner Sawle Arrell is buried in the Moro River War Cemetery situated in the locality of San Donato in the Commune of Ortona, Italy.

C.M. Johnston


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: The help and co-operation of the following were vital: Joann Alho, Judith Allison, Harrison Arrell (Kenner Arrell's nephew), Angus Bain, Kate (Thomson) Berscht, Kenneth Berscht, Angela Connell, William DeHarte, Anne Denneny, Marion (Shaw) Jamieson, Richard Lawrence, Barbara Martindale, and Gloria Pare. Angus Bain, the Berschts, Marion Jamieson, and Barbara Martindale also granted valuable interviews and provided key documentation.

SOURCES: National Archives of Canada: Wartime Personnel Records / Service Record of Lieutenant Kenner S. Arrell; Record Group 24, War Diaries, vol. 15296: War Diary of the 48th Highlanders of Canada, 26, 27 Dec. 1943; Commonwealth War Graves Commission: Commemorative Information, Lieutenant Kenner S. Arrell; a collection of Kenner Arrell's wartime letters (in the possession of the Berscht family); Kenneth Berscht, "Memoirs" (unpublished, n.d.); Haldimand County Museum and Archives: assorted school records, 1925-1930, Minute Book, D Co.y [Dufferin and Haldimand Rifles], 5 Jan., 13 Nov. 1939, 25 Apr. 1940; Harrison Arrell, "Reminiscences" (typescript, n.d.), L.T. Richardson, "Harrison Arrell - A Tribute" (typescript, n.d.); McKinnon Park Secondary School (Caledonia): Minutes of the Caledonia Board of Education, 10 March 1927 - 2 December 1935; Register of Daily Attendance at the [Caledonia High] School, from September 193[1] to June 193[2], 1933-1934, 1934-1935, 1935-1936; Canadian Baptist Archives / McMaster Divinity College: McMaster University Student File 6620, Kenner S. Arrell, Biographical file, Kenner S. Arrell (newspaper and magazine obituaries); McMaster University Library / W. Ready Archives: Marmor, 1937-38, 66, 72, 1938-39, 18, 39, 67-9, 75, 79, 91, McMaster Alumni News, 4 Dec. 1939, 15 Feb., 28 Apr. 1944, 22 Feb. 1945, McMaster Quarterly, Nov. 1938, Silhouette, various issues, 1936-39; Grand River Sachem, 26 January 1944, 10 Nov. 1998 (Barbara Martindale, "Remembrance Day at great uncle's grave in Italy"); Hamilton Spectator, 10, 19 Jan. 1944, 4 Jan. 1945.
Kim Beattie, DILEAS: History of the 48th Highlanders of Canada, 1929-1956 (Toronto: 48th Highlanders of Canada, 1957), 480-2; W.T. Barnard, The Queen's Own Rifles of Canada, 1860-1960 (Don Mills: T.H. Best, 1960), 184 passim; G.W.L. Nicholson, Official History of the Canadian Army in the Second World War, II: The Canadians in Italy, 1943-1945 (Ottawa: Queen's Printer, 1955), 315-36, and chaps. IX, X; Daniel G. Dancocks, The D-Day Dodgers: The Canadians in Italy, 1943-1945 (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1991), chap. 8 ("Bloody December"); Mark Zuehlke, Ortona: Canada's Epic World War II Battle (Toronto: Stoddart, 1999), 338, and chap. 27 ("Carry On"); J.B. Conacher, "The Battle for Agira [Sicily], July 24-8, 1943: An Episode in Canadian Military History", Canadian Historical Review, XXX, 1 (March 1949), 1-21; Donald Dargie, The Moilers: Canadian Short Stories of the 1920's, 1930's and 1940's (St. George ON: Hystarg Associates, 1991; carries an account of Angus Bain's wartime experiences in Italy, with references to Kenner Arrell).

[ For related biographies, see Roy Howard Hillgartner, Gordon Rosebrugh Holder, James Gordon Sloane ]