The Royal Canadian Legion Saskatchewan Command LEST WE FORGET 277 O’DONNELL, John Kevin WWII Kevin was born in Lanigan, Saskatchewan on February 5, 1925. He enlisted in Regina on August 10, 1943 and was trained for the infantry before going to the United Kingdom as reinforcement. He went to Northwest Europe in the spring of 1945 and on VE-Day was in Ghent, Belgium. He served for a time with the Saskatchewan Light Infantry and volunteered for the Pacific war. On VJ-Day, he was on a train traveling west through Ontario when word came of the Japanese surrender. Private left the service in Regina on September 25, 1945. After the war, he took classes in the College of Engineering at the University of Saskatchewan and joined the staff of PFRA (1946-1981) as a technologist. He then moved to Potash Corporation of Saskatchewan as a geotechnical technologist (1981-87). Married with one daughter, Kevin served on his church council for three years, as secretary-treasurer of his union for seven years and has been on the executive of Nutana Legion Branch 362 for four years. O’LEARY, John WWII John was born in Claybank, Saskatchewan in 1919. He joined the Royal Canadian Air Force Bomber Command and served in Canada and England. Flying Officer O’Leary served as a Bomb Aimer in the RCAF 428 Lancaster Bomber (Ghost) Squadron from 1941-45. On July 13, 1943, while on his seventeenth mission, his aircraft was shot down over Holland but he bailed out and proceeded to evade the enemy. He met a friendly Dutch farmer, traded his uniform for coveralls and used his farm experience by milking cows and digging up roots in the Holland countryside. He eventually made contact with the Underground and made his way through Belgium, France and Spain to Gibraltar by foot, bicycle and rail and finally made it back to his squadron in England. He received the Air Observer Badge, the 1939-45 Star and the Canadian Volunteer Service Medal with Clasp. John has been a member of Havelock Legion Branch 389 in Ontario and as of March 2012, was living with his wife in a retirement residence in Peterborough, Ontario. OLSON, Kenneth R. KOREA Kenneth was born on February 18, 1929 in Wynyard, Saskatchewan. He enlisted in Saskatoon in 1950 as a Royal Canadian Air Force cadet and trained as a pilot. He served with Squadrons 435 and 436 as part of Air Transport Command. His first job was to transport the wounded from the Korean War across Canada in C-47s. In the early 1950s, he flew C119s to all Arctic weather stations (Alert, Eureka, Resolute, Isachsen, Mould Bay) and in the 1960s, he was on the C130 Hercules. He then flew CF104s to NATO bases in Europe, troops to Norway for NATO exercises, supplies and equipment for peacekeeping to Biak, New Guinea, Cyprus, El Arish and to Nigeria during the civil war there. Captain Olsen left the service in Edmonton in 1972 and took a B.A. degree in Saskatchewan. Kenneth married and had four sons and one daughter.
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