www.militarysupport.ca 127 Not far behind the lead troops Cpl. Finton, of the three-inch mortar platoon, found the frayed ends of a broken telephone wire leading from his mortars to the forward Observation Post. In a few moments he had spliced the raw ends together, and then suddenly his hands relaxed and let the thin cable fall to the sandy soil. His body slumped, falling forward on the wire that was already carrying the words of living men. He had come from the counties. He had joined his Regiment in 1939 and had fought with it and lived for it ever since that day. He was one of the last of the ‘originals’ and only a week earlier had refused his repatriation ticket-of-leave to Canada… On April 17, 1945, as the evening light dimmed over the forest of Nieuwmilligen, Cpl. Finton took his ticket – not one of leave – but one of transfer to that other, that swollen regiment of shadows that has grown through the red years even as the living regiment dwindled in death. As he had been amongst the first to come, now he was the last to go – the last to take his warrior’s transfer to the unseen ranks of the White Battalion. About an hour drive north of Arnhem, Holland is Holten Canadian War Cemetery. When I take my groups there, we always walk to Plot I, Row F, Grave 11 to visit Corporal Elwood Finton age 24,
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