Starting its active service in November 2012, the Canadian Coast Guard Ship (CCGS) Caporal Kaeble V.C. is a mid-shore patrol vessel. It is one of nine Hero-class patrol vessels ordered by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans/Canadian Coast Guard, in September 2009. Each of the nine Hero-class patrol vessels will be named for personnel from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP Officers), Canadian Coast Guard (sailors, aircrew), Department of Fisheries and Oceans (fisheries officers) and Canadian Forces (soldiers, sailors, and aircrew) who are credited with performing exceptional or heroic acts during their service.
Joseph Thomas Kaeble was born in St-Moïse, Quebec on 5 May 1892. Before he enlisted in the 22nd Infantry Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force during the First World War, he earned his living as a mechanic.
Corporal Kaeble was awarded the Victoria Cross posthumously for demonstrating singular bravery on 8 and 9 June 1918. He was in charge of a machine gun section in the Canadian line near Neuville-Vitasse, near Arras in France, when an intense bombardment fell on the trenches heralding a strong enemy raid. By the time the shells stopped falling, all of his section but one were casualties. Seeing some fifty Germans advancing toward his position, Kaeble jumped over the parapet of his trench firing a Lewis machine gun at the approaching enemy. Although repeatedly struck, Corporal Kaeble continued to empty one magazine after another into the attackers until he fell back into the trench mortally wounded, dying shortly afterward. The repulse of the enemy raid at this point was due to his courage.
