At 11 a.m. on Remembrance Day, Nanaimo’s Nick Janicki, a 100-year-old veteran of the Second World War, will take a moment to pause and remember his older brother as well as friends who were killed in combat.
“I’m just so bloody thankful that I’m here, I’m one of those that was able to come home,” he said.
Thankful because so much life and love was still ahead of him back when Pvt. Janicki, a 21-year-old infantryman with the Canadian Scottish Regiment, fought his way across the battlefields of Holland, liberating Dutch towns in the final weeks of the war.
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Conscripted at 18 years old, he travelled from his home of Vernon, where he worked as a meat cutter, to Vancouver to sign up with the army. After a few months of basic training in Camrose, Alta., he spent most of the next two years in Sidney, B.C., taking turns in the gun pits protecting air force assets there. In December of 1944, he boarded the Ile de France troop ship for Greenock, Scotland, then travelled by rail to Aldershot, England, where he received word in February of 1945 that his brother had died in battle.
“It was a real shocker, but the one thing that sort of kept me flying was I thought of my mother and dad at home, getting the news of brother David being killed in action and me still over there,” he said.
Before he knew it, he was in Dover at the white cliffs, boarding a small military ship to Ostend, Belgium, then to Ghent, and then into the forest where he and others reinforced the Canadian Scottish Regiment before crossing the Rhine in the Netherlands.
“The Canadian troops were given the job of sort of liberating the Netherlands, so that’s where my real part in the war got involved,” Janicki said. “There were small battles along the way, but the first big battle was in Deventer.”
There, Janicki’s company fought across an open field scarred with huge ditches that had been dug to slow the progress of tanks. There was mortar and rifle fire and Janicki’s commanding officer was killed in combat.
“We got to the outskirts of the city and then fought our way through the city and through the middle of the city and more or less chased the German soldiers across the Ijssel River or wherever they went,” he said.
Once the city had been cleared, the colonel marched the soldiers down the main street. Janicki could sense the joy the people felt and their emotions in getting back their country and their way of life.
“I can always remember the Dutch people lined up on the side of the street, on rooftops, hanging out of the windows, waving as we marched,” he said. “There was a cute little blonde girl that waved. I thought she was waving at me, but it could have been anybody.”
There was time, before the regiment continued on, to celebrate winning the battle, and Janicki returned to the hat-and-purse shop on the main street to meet the owners and their daughter, 19-year-old Derthie, who had waved at him.
There was more fighting over the next two weeks, and more deaths, including an incident in which the Germans bazookaed an old barn where Canadian soldiers were bunking, killing more than two dozen men. But the day Janicki and company marched into Leer, Germany, a small plane, flying low with a loudspeaker, blared the news that the Germans had surrendered and the war was over.
“We were all glad to see the end of the war, everybody was, and getting rid of the German Nazi regime,” Janicki said. “Everybody was just so happy. We knew that we could come back home and get back to civilian life again.”
It was several months before the troops could come back home. Janicki worked nights in the officers’ bar and chauffeured them around in a Jeep, but he also had opportunities to continue to call on Derthie and her family.
Eventually, his company was transported back home, via New York, to Victoria. Janicki’s old meat-cutting job in Vernon was waiting for him, and he went on to spend his career in the deli and meat-packing business. An army pal set him up with a woman, June, for a nightclub date in Vancouver, and the two were married for 55 years until her death.
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As the years passed by, Janicki didn’t forget the Netherlands and the city of Deventer. He travelled back with June, and visited his brother’s grave at Groesbeek Cemetery, and also went there on a trip with his daughters.
He wanted to go again in 2020, for the 75th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, but the COVID-19 pandemic put a hold on those plans. This past spring, though, Janicki had a chance to be part of Liberation Day celebrations in Deventer and Wageningen, participate in a parade, and have a look at a new bronze plaque in Deventer’s city hall courtyard recognizing the contributions of the Canadian Scottish Regiment in the Second World War.
“I was a guest of honour – something that I never, ever thought would have happened in my lifetime…” he said. “No matter where I went, somebody wanted to shake my hand and say ‘thank you for what you did for us during the war.’”
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And Janicki has another connection to the city: It’s the hometown of his second wife, Derthie, the woman who waved at him the day he liberated Deventer.
The two were together for 10 years before she died a few years ago. She was a widow, he was a widower, and though they hadn’t spoken in 58 years, he managed to track her down where she lived in Las Vegas, and they re-connected at a hotel bar on the strip.
“It was as if it was meant to be,” he said. “We had so much to talk about. All those years.”
Janicki still lives independently in his home, moves around well with or without his “Cadillac” walker, and is even talking about another trip this month to the U.S. to celebrate Thanksgiving with his American in-laws.
He doesn’t have the secret to longevity, except maybe to make the most of the kind of life and freedom he personally fought for.
“If the next 100 years are anything like the last 100 years, it’ll be a pretty good life,” he said.
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