LINCOLNVILLE – He was 38 years old, a man from Sunnyville who had traded the fortifications of Halifax harbour for the battlefields of Italy, when the Germans came at him on a railway embankment south of Potenza on the morning of Sept. 20, 1943.
His platoon had gone forward and one of its officers lay wounded, temporarily blinded by an injury beneath his eye. There was a captured enemy half-track to guard. Howard William Pelly, armed with a Thompson submachine gun and two grenades, had been ordered to stay behind and watch over both.
Then came the counterattack. Pelly held off the Germans alone, protected the vehicle and prevented his platoon from being cut off. He crossed ground swept by bullets to tell his commanding officer precisely where the enemy and his own men were positioned. Artillery fire followed and the advance continued.
For his actions that day, the West Nova Scotia Regiment infantryman received the Military Medal for bravery. Three weeks later, he was wounded in battle near Jelsi. Six months after that, having returned to his unit, he was wounded again near Ortona.
He survived the war, came home to Guysborough County, put in 19 years with the Department of Highways and, with his second wife, Jean, opened his home to more than 200 foster children. They adopted two boys. When he died in 1980, he was buried in Evergreen Cemetery in Guysborough.
And there, for the most part, his remarkable story stayed. But not for much longer.
Pelly’s name will be among 98 – 29 from the First World War and 69 from the Second – inscribed on a new cenotaph at the north end of the Lincolnville Loop, honouring African Nova Scotian veterans from Guysborough County. The granite monument will feature a red maple leaf between two African symbols representing perseverance and bravery, with space reserved for veterans whose names may yet come to light. The site will also include signage and a solar-powered bench where visitors can sit and charge their devices, with a public washroom nearby. The unveiling is tentatively planned for the end of October, ahead of Remembrance Day.
Ninety-eight names
In fact, the project, under the auspices of the Upper Big Tracadie Seniors Action Club, might never have seen the light of day but for one woman’s astonishment that a decorated soldier from her own community – and so many others like him – had become all but unknown there.
“It started with Howard Pelly,” Mary Desmond, an African Nova Scotian elder and District 2 councillor for the Municipality of the District of Guysborough, told The Journal last week, recounting how, while attending a Remembrance Day event at her local Legion last year, fellow member Lance Peters told her about Pelly.
Though he couldn’t remember the soldier’s name, he promised to point him out when a video was shown during the observance. When Pelly’s face appeared on screen, Desmond was bowled over. “I’d never heard anything about him,” she said. “Here we have a hero right in our own county, and nothing.”
After the service, she began asking members of Pelly’s family what they knew. Eventually, one relative supplied information about a Halifax ceremony at which his medals had been displayed. Again, she couldn’t quite believe what she was hearing. Here was a decorated soldier from her own county, a man whose courage had helped save his comrades in one of the Second World War’s gruelling campaigns, and his accomplishments were scarcely known in the place he had called home.
She wondered who else was in danger of being forgotten. “Then I started digging,” she said.
During the ensuing months, Desmond searched Veterans Affairs material, Legion records and church honour rolls. She pursued names supplied by families and community members.
Getting the names together, however, was only half the battle. Establishing who had actually served proved to be another undertaking altogether.
“That’s where I came in,” local military historian Bruce MacDonald told The Journal. “She had me vet the names.”
While First World War personnel records are relatively accessible, making it possible to establish whether someone enlisted in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, they don’t necessarily account for everyone who served with Canadian militia units at home, he explained.
Meanwhile, Second World War records presented an even greater challenge. There is no comparably comprehensive, publicly accessible list of everyone who enlisted, and surviving service records are not equally available for all veterans.
Then there is the problem of family recollection. Names remembered imperfectly, stories passed down through generations and service histories can be difficult to reconcile with surviving documents.
Given the hurdles, MacDonald said, Desmond’s results were impressive indeed. “It wasn’t easy.”
Desmond knows there may be omissions, and she’s made provision for them. “I did leave a space on the cenotaph for that,” she said.
Built by a community
Turning her research into a permanent monument has taken another collective effort.
Pictou County graphic designer John Ashton created the cenotaph’s design, while Smet Monuments of New Brunswick is producing the granite monument. Local contractor Jeremy Clyke is building the base. Desmond herself wrote the inscription, paying tribute to the Black Loyalists of Guysborough who sought refuge, established communities and endured injustice.
She also credits Ashley Cunningham of the Guysborough District Business Partnership with helping prepare the Veterans Affairs funding applications and MacDonald with repeatedly checking the names she had gathered.
Financial support has come from Veterans Affairs, the Municipality of the District of Guysborough, the Upper Big Tracadie Seniors Action Club and other contributors. The club’s members are also providing in-kind assistance and will help maintain the site after the unveiling.
For Desmond, the monument is about more than recovering names from incomplete records. It is an acknowledgement of a history in which Black Canadians who volunteered to serve their country often encountered discrimination rather than recognition.
The seniors club, in announcing the project, pointed to the experience of the No. 2 Construction Battalion during the First World War. Its members fought for the right to serve despite systemic anti-Black racism, mistreatment for which the federal government formally apologized on July 9, 2022.
More than a century after those men went overseas, Desmond wants their descendants, and the descendants of other African Nova Scotian veterans, to have a place where that service can be remembered. “This is a legacy piece,” she said.
Desmond, who says she intends to leave municipal council at the end of her term, also sees the monument as a lasting contribution to the communities she represents.
“That’s going to stay there for a long time,” she said, imagining children reading the inscriptions and families stopping to recognize a name.
“Oh, that was my great-great-grandfather.”
