CKPR o@ca.on.york_county.toronto.globe_and_mail 2003-11-08 published
Tales of derring-do
By Rod MICKLEBURGH,
Saturday,
November 8, 2003 - Page F6
Thunder Bay -- In a senseless war that lasted four years and
took millions of lives, it was rare for individuals to stand
out amid the carnage. But some managed.
Meet
Hector
Fraser
DOUGALL, a corker of a Canadian with more
tales of derring-do attached to his name than you could shake
a First World War riding stick at. You think Steve McQueen's
motorcycle ride was heroic in The Great Escape? After his shelled
Sopwith Camel was shot down behind German lines and he was taken
prisoner, Mr.
DOUGALL made at least three dramatic escape attempts.
During one dash for freedom, the story goes, he saved the life
of fellow escaper William
STEPHENSON, who later became the legendary
spymaster Intrepid, by tossing him over a stone wall as the pair
fled a furious, gun-firing farmer who didn't appreciate his ducks
being pilfered. When their capture appeared inevitable, Mr.
STEPHENSON
impersonated a German officer and ordered Mr.
DOUGALL returned
to prison. As he was marched away, Mr.
STEPHENSON made good his
own escape.
It was a typically audacious
DOUGALL stunt that yielded the largest
and most vivid of the First World War artifacts sent in by Canadians
to The Globe and Mail -- the huge German flag that flew over
the grim, fortress-like PoW camp at Holzminden, where guards
did their best to contain the fighter pilot.
Mr. DOUGALL pinched the flag on Armistice Day, November 11, 1918,
the day the Imperial German Army surrendered.
"The prisoners woke up that morning and the guards were all gone,"
said his son, Fraser
DOUGALL. "
Some of the prisoners went down
to the village to cause a bit of wrack and ruin. But dad wanted
the flag. He knew how to get to the roof from one of his escape
attempts. So he picked a few locks, went up there, took it down,
and kept it."
Mr. DOUGALL then managed to lug the bulky flag all the way through
Germany, back to England and finally to Canada. When he died
in 1960, it was found at the bottom of a trunk full of souvenirs,
including grenades, bayonets, old muskets, bombs, diaries, photos,
old German money, helmets and his thin, black flying cap.
"This is a piece of work, this is. It went right through the
war," Fraser
DOUGALL said as he unfurled the old flag across
his dining room table in Thunder Bay. The edges fell over the
side like a table cloth.
The flag is dominated by a fierce black-and-gold representation
of the imperial German eagle, with an iron cross in the top left-hand
corner -- the state flag of Prussia from 1892 to 1918. Eighty-five
years later, the colours are still bright. A red tongue flickers
menacingly in the eagle's open beak, on its head a red-and-gold
crown topped by a blue cross, while a mace and a bejewelled orb
are clutched in its dark talons.
"It was really meant to convey a sense of power. You can see
that, even now."
It has become his son's passion to recount, preserve and even
relive Mr.
DOUGALL's wartime experiences. Mementos are prominently
displayed in the downstairs recreation room, and scrapbooks have
been put together meticulously.
Fraser DOUGALL even organized a trip to Europe three years ago
to revisit as many of his father's prison stops as possible.
To ensure that the lore remained in the family, he brought along
his wife and children, enticing them with newsletters, quizzes
about his father that brought cash rewards and tapes describing
what they could expect to find there.
More than once during the expedition, he knocked on the doors
of unsuspecting Germans, asking if they knew that the places
they lived were once PoW stopovers. (Few did.) And on his return,
Fraser DOUGALL had a 23-minute video, which he will show this
Remembrance Day to the local Rotary Club, and the experience
of a lifetime.
"The war. The war. The war. The aura of it has always been with
me," he said. "When we found the first place where my father
was incarcerated -- prison from Napoleonic times -- the others
found it interesting. But for me, it was incredibly emotional.
It was my first face-to-face meeting with the dirt and filth
that my father endured.
"I felt a real sense of closure, of fulfilment."
His father, a tough, intimidating Winnipegger from a family of
carriage-makers and blacksmiths, signed up for the war while
still in his teens. Hector Fraser
DOUGALL had spent 14 months
in the trenches when he was wounded. While recuperating in hospital,
he decided the infantry was not for him. According to his son,
he told them, "There are too many people with missing arms and
legs. I want out!"
He learned to fly and joined the Royal Flying Corps. "I once
asked him why he became a pilot," Fraser
DOUGALL said. "He said
it was simple: 'I could shoot back.' "
Even in the trenches, however, Mr.
DOUGALL was no pussycat. Once,
his father kidnapped a piano player so "the boys" could enjoy
a bit of a sing-song. Mr.
DOUGALL noticed one of the soldiers
singing much louder than the others, so he took out his pistol
and shot him in the face. Mr.
DOUGALL believed the man was a
German spy, trying too hard to fit in. He turned out to be right.
In his diary, Mr.
DOUGALL nonchalantly recorded a close call
on a patrol, 10 days before he was shot down: "Went eight miles
into Hunland.... Came back about a foot off the ground with machine
guns blazing after me, three bullet holes thru my machine. Froze
my nose."
As a prisoner, Mr.
DOUGALL was forever getting into trouble,
whether for insubordination or for his actual escapes. One time,
he and flying mate S.G.
WILLIAMS jumped from a train transporting
them between prisons, a 500-kilometre trek from Holland. For
17 days, they travelled only at night, swimming rivers to escape
pursuers and raiding farms for food. At one point, Mr.
WILLIAMS
reported, "
DOUGALL jumped a six-foot fence with a half-dozen
eggs, basin of milk, jam, large pot of honey and many other articles.
Everything was intact."
When the two were finally nabbed just short of the frontier,
Mr. WILLIAMS bolted again. As a guard prepared to shoot, Mr.
DOUGALL tussled with him and ruined his aim. His friend lived
to make it back to England.
Mr. DOUGALL's last escape effort at Holzminden was typically
brazen. He rounded up two ladders, bound them with rope from
the camp's flagstaffs, and was just about to project himself
on the end of the ladders out a second-floor window and over
the barbed wire to safety when he was discovered by guards.
At war's end, he hid the flag from his desultory German captors
until arrangements finally were made to have the prisoners sent
home. He was no slouch after that, either. He earned money stunt
flying for a while; was the first pilot to venture into Northern
Ontario; captained an early version of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers
started CKPR, the first radio station in Port Arthur, Ontario
took a leading role in training pilots for the Second World War
and, in 1954, opened the Lakehead's first television station.
Today, DOUGALL
Media owns four radio stations, a community newspaper
and both television stations in Thunder Bay.
Mr. DOUGALL accomplished all this in spite of permanent leftover
pain from his war wounds, according to his son. "He had a brace
on his back. His ribs hurt. He was always ill." Mr.
DOUGALL was
eventually worth millions, but could never get life insurance
or a pension because of his injuries.
After all his research, Fraser
DOUGALL, a trim, athletic 61-year-old,
said he feels closer than ever to his larger-than-life father,
who was in his late 40s when Fraser was born.
"I'd been living away from home since I was 13," he said, gesturing
toward his lovingly preserved collection of war relics. "For
me, all this is my father.... I wanted to preserve his story.
It's part of me, and now, I think I understand him a lot better."
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