We Deserve Recognition

Well I don’t know, I think we were outlawed right from the start. When we come back, we were just a bunch of, they didn’t want nothing, nobody wanted anything to do with us at all, that was my opinion. They figured that we were just the scruff of the gall darn Canadian, and I can’t figure out why we were picked out to go over there. Well, they told us it was because we were tropical, we come from the tropics that we were already climatized (sp). But, they sent us over there. But, I don’t know. And the people, like some of the officers that were with us they had no military training whatsoever. A lot of the men had more training than some of the officers. Our commanding officer, what he was, was a criminal reporter for the Winnipeg Free Press before he joined, and he didn’t join until after we come back to Canada you know. Like our colonel of our company was Colonel Trist, he was a First World War Veteran, and so was the sergeant major that was killed, he was a First World War Veteran. They were, they knew what they were doing. As far as treatment we got when we come back, I don’t know. In the last few years we’ve got more recognition than we’ve ever had, and I don’t know why they waited this long. Like, I wouldn’t care whether we were prisoners of war but, like, I get The Legionnaire and I still but once I’ve seen the Battle of Hong Kong was in the paper. Of course there was no photographers or anything else over there, but they could mention it around Christmas, that this is the day Hong Kong fell, or this is the day that we went into action and stuff like that, but . . . and you go to, like I belong to the Legion for 52 years now. As far as I’m concerned, we don’t, they don’t associate with us at all. I don’t go to their meetings, I don’t know why I even belong, actually. We deserve as much recognition as any of the other soldiers. We volunteered, we did the best we could with what we had, and that, what we had was nothing.

Mr. Agerbak offers his feelings on what he feels is the low esteem given to the Veterans of Hong Kong by their peers, and argues for better recognition of his (their) service.

Knud Agerbak

Knud Agerbak was born in Copenhagen, Denmark in 1918. His family of seven emigrated to Canada in 1927, settling in Manitoba where his father worked as a farm labourer. Mr. Agerbak started working on a farm at the age of 13. He then loaded freight for the railroad, and finally worked in a pulp mill. His sense of patriotism led him to enlist the day that war was declared in 1939. He tried to enlist in the PPCLI, but not having reached the age of 21 didn’t have naturalized Canadian status and was turned down. The Winnipeg Grenadiers did , however, accept him. He performed garrison duty in both Bermuda and Jamaica before his deployment to Hong Kong. Hong Kong quickly surrendered, and Mr. Agerbak spent time on labour gangs at KaiTak airport in Hong Kong, and the Yokohama shipyards and northern iron mines in Japan.