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Sunday November 8, 1998. Kenora NEWS
Enterprise
Song came to war veteran on beach of Dunkirk
by Bryan Phelan of The
Enterprise
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Dreaming of Victory
Eagle Lake, Ont. - Seated at one of several drums at a powwow at the Eagle Lake Arena, Bud
Friday sang a "Veteran's Song".
Friday, a 72 year old Ojibway from Seine River First Nation east of Fort Frances, was
military policeman with the 3rd Division of the Winnipeg Rifles during the Second World
War.
In May 1945, Friday was one of thousands who were carried on 20-foot barges from ships in
the North Sea's Strait of Dover to a beach at Dunkirk, France.
Dunkirk had been occupied by the German army since the spring of 1940, when Hitler's army
forced a massive evacuation of about 350, 000 British, French and Belgian soldiers.
When the Allied troops landed to liberate Dunkirk, Friday, then 18 years old, served as a
motorcycle-riding radio dispatcher, in constant contact with another Ojibway language
speaker. Tactical messages in Ojibway could be passed by radio for up to 10 miles, without
fear that the Germans would decipher the communication, he says.
"Where there were dips in the cliffs, they had great big guns shooting down at
us," Friday recalls of the imposing task then at hand. "you could see the
machine gun bullets coming down. A lot of men were killed there." Allied soldiers
were given miniature bottles of rum to help numb thoughts of death, chuckles Friday.
Two unsuccessful attempts at storming the cliffs had already been made after two days on
the beach when an exhausted Friday fell asleep on the sand, using a motorcycle tire for a
pillow.
"That's when I had a vision in my dreams," he recalls. "An old man said,
'I'm going to give you something that will help you win this war."
Friday says he was given a song, in Ojibway:
I am overseas
I am overseas
Do not feel sad
(Verse)
Don't feel sad
Do not feel sad
I'll be coming home soon
I'll be coming home soon
Do not feel sad mama
I am coming home
I am coming home
"It must have been the Great Spirit because He turned things around for us from that
day on," Friday says of the dream's messenger.
It was daylight when Friday opened his eyes. He began to sing the song that came to him in
his sleep.
"A great big storm came up. It was so severe it lifted the water up and formed a fog.
The Germans couldn't see where we were; that's when everyone moved in."
Allied troops captured "the big German guns" and advanced 10 miles that day,
says Friday. The city of Dunkirk, though severely damaged, was freed in what Friday counts
as one of the final turning points in the war.
He say he twice tried to sing that same song at outdoor powwows in Northwestern Ontario in
the early 1960s, but that both time violent storms disrupted the dancing.
On Oct. 3 in Eagle Lake, Friday was singing the song again - this time on a beautiful fall
day, with a new drum said to have a healing purpose.
"A couple of years ago, I had the same vision, and I was told to use that song."
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