Coun. Waye Mason uncovers grandfather's WWII contribution

A discarded piece of wartime history has helped Halifax Coun. Waye Mason uncover the truth about his grandfather's contributions in the Second World War.

In the summer, Mason and his family travelled to the Netherlands to pick up a helmet that had belonged to his grandfather, and namesake, John Burton Waye. 

The badly damaged helmet helped Mason fill in the gaps in his grandfather's wartime service, which Waye had never discussed with his family. 

Uncovering the truth

Mason told CBC's Information Morning that he'd grown up with his grandfather nearby, but had never known anything about his time in the Canadian Army, other than he had served as an engineer with the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division.

"When I asked him questions, he would emphasize, 'I was an engineer, we just built stuff, you know, all the fighting was over before we got there,'" Mason said.

"And what we learned on this trip was that was entirely not true."

Recently, Mason was contacted by the producers of a History television show called War Junk, which features two historians who travel to battlefields in search of artifacts from the two world wars.

Damaged helmet

The producers had found a helmet bearing Mason's grandfather's service number at a small private museum in the Netherlands. They Googled the name associated with the number, and contacted Mason after discovering a blog post in which he'd used his grandfather's name. 

"Because the artifact was so damaged, they thought that he had died at that point," Mason said.

In fact, his grandfather had not only survived but lived into his late 90s.

The helmet had been punctured by shrapnel in two places. Mason said War Junk producers knew his grandfather had been riding in a military vehicle with another soldier when they were hit by a German mortar. 

The other soldier died, and the producers thought because Waye's helmet was so badly damaged, the record must have been mistaken in showing that he survived.

'He was in shock'

In fact, Waye had miraculously avoided death; he hadn't even gone to the medic, even though the piece of shrapnel had lodged itself in his head, causing permanent deafness in one ear. 

"He was in shock and he didn't want to go and see a medic, because if you [went] back to the hospital, you didn't get to go back to the company that you were with, you got assigned to the next people heading to the front," Mason said.

"He'd been training with [the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division] since 1941, he didn't want to be in any other unit but with these guys."

Protecting family

Mason said his grandfather pulled the piece of shrapnel out himself.

In later years Waye never discussed that or any other aspect of his service with his family, even though a flag recovered from the German town of Sonsbeck hung behind his desk — a relic of another confrontation in which the 3rd Canadian Infantry Division was caught. 

Mason said his grandfather's silence came from a desire to protect his family from what he'd experienced.

"He didn't want to contaminate his own children with what he'd been through."

'It was really moving'

But Mason said even decades after his grandfather's death, uncovering the extent of what he went through was a sobering experience. 

"My grandfather then was slightly younger than my son is now," Mason said. 

"So to hold this helmet and to think about all the horrible stuff that my grandfather had gone through as an 18-, 19- and 20-year old man, and to keep going — it was really moving."

Into the Rhineland, the War Junk episode about John Burton Waye, airs Thursday night on History channel.