Valiant brothers told a noble lie

The Calgary Herald
by Lubomyr Luciuk

April 9, 2007 -- There were two of them. Both were liars. The younger man was Stephen, aged 25. His older brother, George, was 33. Until 17 August 1914 they lived near Edmonton. Within two weeks of the war being declared, they had volunteered to join the Canadian Over-Seas Expeditionary Force. Then they were sent east, to the Valcartier Militia Camp, just outside Quebec City. That's where they completed their Attestation Papers, on 4 and 19 September. Both swore they had been born in Russia, an allied power. Mr E Pascoe witnessed their statements, presumably believing they were honest lads. They weren't. It took just over 90 years for the truth, and me, to catch up with them.

Stephen became Private No. 19388 with the 9th Infantry Battalion. George was also a Private, No.19361, in the 1st Infantry Battalion. We know a bit more "but not much" about each of them.

Stephen was short, standing around 5' 3", perhaps a bit taller as some of his documents record a height of 5' 5". He had a dark complexion, brown eyes and black hair but no other distinguishing marks. The war soon changed that. He picked up a venereal disease behind the lines, "not severe" according to the 2 March 1915 note in his medical record. Worse would come. In May an exploding shell rendered him completely and permanently deaf in his left ear, partly so in the right. Returned to duty he was again hurt badly, 13 June 1916, gunshot wounds to the face and neck. But his frontline military service continued until 8 October 1917 when he suffered contusions to hip, head and hand. Repatriated to England, he was eventually shipped home, arriving in Halifax aboard the Empress Britain, 21 January 1919. Discharged as "medically unfit" on 19 February, Stephen was officially declared to have a 15% disability as a direct result of military service. So, at 30, he was a disabled and unskilled labourer, with no home other than the YMCA's Red Triangle Club in Toronto. He died there in 1934.

Stephen endured another loss. George, also 5' 3", but with blue eyes, brown hair and a fair complexion, was killed in action, 24 May 1915, during the Battle of Festubert. He fell somewhere in the vicinity of Le Quinque Road, described in Lieutenant Edmund Blunden's haunting war poem of the same name as a "cemeterial fen," sunk into a "foul-gorged" landscape. Digging deep trenches there was impossible so "grouse butts," stacked islands of sandbags, provided the only shelter our troops had, poor protection against artillery bombardments of the intensity that the 1st Battalion’s War Diary recorded on 23 and 24 May. Of George's body no identifiable trace was ever found and so memorial cross erected.

And therein lies a tale. Neither George nor Stephen should have been anywhere near the Western Front. They were not born in Russia. They came from a western Ukrainian village, Beremiany. It still exists. And, on the date the Great War was declared, their hamlet was within the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Technically, by Ottawa's definition, the brothers were both "enemy aliens." If that had been discovered they would have been interned, along with thousands of their fellow Ukrainian Canadians in one of the 24 concentration camps set aside for that purpose. There they would have been forced to labour for the profit of their gaolers and subjected to other state-sanctioned indignities. The Dividenko brothers avoided all that by lying about who they were and where they had come from. The price they paid for fibbing you already know.

Yet George was not entirely lost to history. His name, along with that of the 11,284 other Canadian soldiers who went "missing, presumed dead" in France, and whose bodies were never recovered, is inscribed on the Vimy Memorial's ramparts. Today our prime minister, the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, will be there to honour the memory of all those men. Having spoken in Parliament of the need for righting the historical injustices done to Ukrainians and other Europeans during Canada's first national internment operations, I trust Mr Harper will pause, if only for a few seconds, to look upon the name of "G Dividenko." Where George lies may forever be known only unto God but he who was an "enemy alien" who died for Canada - is now known to all.

Lubomyr Luciuk is a professor of political geography at The Royal Military College of Canada