[Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP)]

An article in the Ottawa Sun today:

Tue, August 17, 2004

Final salute for Strome Galloway

By Earl McRae

When I entered Room 7 of Hulse, Playfair, and McGarry funeral home where his flag-draped casket lay, I saw his two daughters talking to mourners, and waited to ask my question.

A young soldier stood solemnly in honour of Col. Strome Galloway whose many medals were displayed atop velvet cushions near two large photographs of him in uniform, one of them from World War II.

And what a dashing figure he cut with his sweeping handlebar mustache that was the talk of the army when he was a captain leading "B" company of the Royal Canadian Regiment during many of the most hellacious battles of the Italian theatre in 1943 and 1944.

Over the years, I'd heard of this man named Strome Galloway who had distinguished himself in combat, a soldier's soldier who stayed in the army after the war until his retirement, and the author of nine books, including his autobiography; who started out as a newspaper reporter in Aylmer, Ont., where he met his wife, Jean Love, she who went on to a notable career in journalism, at one time as a columnist for the Globe And Mail.

I'd hoped that one day I'd get to meet him, and four years ago on Remembrance Day, sitting in a school classroom waiting to speak, was a tall, lean, white-haired man of proud bearing in a blazer bedecked with medals, and though his mustache was no longer dark, but white, and no longer handlebar, but paint brush, I knew right away it was Col. Strome Galloway, and introduced myself.

He talked about his wife, who was seriously ill and needed his constant care, and I was struck by the soft-spoken gentle nature of one who had been such an aggressive, tough, leader of men with reverent respect for him because he demanded nothing of them in battle he didn't participate in himself.

The last two years, we sat together during the Hall Of Valour inductions of those Canadian soldiers, alive and dead, who had been decorated for valour. His mind was sharp, his sense of humour often mischievous. For one who looked somewhat toffish, he had no airs. As a soldier, he soulfully identified more with the grunts than the officers who commanded them.

"Strome," I once asked, "were you ever wounded in the war?"

His eyes twinkled. Yes, he said, in October 1943, in heavy fighting near San Marco, Italy. "I didn't like wearing my helmet, so I'd hang it off the back of my pants. This time I thought maybe I'd better put it on. I no sooner had it on, than I was hit -- right in the ass where my helmet had been."

Since he was a former newspaperman, I asked if he'd ever met the famous World War II correspondent Bill Boss. He laughed. "I sure did. My big mouth got me in trouble." Never a toady, Galloway, in a 1943 interview with Boss, was critical of Maj.-Gen. Guy Simonds saying his stubborn intransigence often created flawed strategies, producing failures.

Earlier this year, at a trooping of the colours on Parliament Hill, Galloway met Gov. Gen. Adrienne Clarkson whose husband is the snobbish, aristocratic John Ralston Saul.

"The last time I saw your husband," he told Clarkson, "he was rolling around on the floor." He explained to the shocked Clarkson that he knew Saul's parents and was referring to when Saul was two years old.

At this year's Hall Of Valour induction, he seemed quieter than usual, I asked how he was feeling. Fine, he said, except: "It's the strangest thing. Ever since the war, my head's like an antenna. It keeps picking up two songs from the '30s and '40s. It plays them over and over, driving me crazy. I can't remember their names off hand, but it's getting worse, keeping me awake at night."

It was the last time I saw him. He died Aug. 11 after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage. He died two years to the day his beloved Jean died of a stroke. Strome Galloway, who is being buried today at Beechwood Cemetery, was 88.

"About a month before he died," said his daughter Rosemary, "he phoned to say the songs had suddenly stopped, that at last he was able to sleep at night." I asked if she knew the names of the songs. "One of them," said his daughter Jean, "was McNamara's Band."

My name is McNamara
I'm the leader of the band
And though we're small in number
We're the best band in the land
Of course I'm the conductor
And I've often had to play
With all the fine musicians
That you read about today.