To mark Remembrance Day, I offer a chapter from Shadows of Tyranny: Defending Democracy in an Age of Dictatorship. It celebrates First Nations war hero Tommy Prince, shown here (left) with his brother, Morris.

In January 1944, as part of Operation Shingle, Canadians led an amphibious landing near the port at Anzio, located on the west coast of Italy about 50 kilometres south of Rome. The objective was to out- flank the formidable German defences known as the Winter Line (or the Gustav Line), and then push on to Rome. The hope was that the landing would also draw German forces away from the Gustav Line, where the Allies were bogged down in a standoff.

The operation did not proceed as planned. The Nazis contained the Allied forces in the Anzio beachhead for four months. The pro- tracted and bloody stalemate didn’t end until May 1944, when in conjunction with an offensive against the Hitler Line farther south, the Anzio forces broke out from the beachhead and started the drive toward Rome.

One Canadian instrumental in achieving the breakout was a sergeant named Tommy Prince. Early in February 1944, near Anzio, Prince volunteered to run a telephone wire 1,400 metres from the Allied trenches to an abandoned farmhouse overlooking a German artillery position. He made his way there, then hid in the house and turned it into an observation post, using the phone to report on shift- ing German positions.

When during an artillery exchange the line got cut, Prince dug some work clothes out of a closet and found a hoe near the back door. Disguised as a peasant farmer, he shuffled outside and pretended to

work the land around the farmhouse. While German soldiers looked on, not knowing what to think, Prince located the break in the severed wire. Kneeling and pretending to tie his shoelaces, he reconnected the two ends.

When he was done, he stood and shook his fist at the Allies, then at the Nazis, as if calling down the wrath of God on both sides. Then he returned to reporting enemy movements. This action—so creative, so characteristic—led to the destruction of four German batteries that had been raining hellfire on Allied troops. If Prince had been caught, he would have been executed as a spy. Instead, he received the Mili- tary Medal, the citation noting that “Sergeant Prince’s courage and utter disregard for personal safety were an inspiration to his fellows and a marked credit to his unit.”

And that is just one example of why, during the Second World War, Tommy Prince—born in a canvas tent near Lake Winnipeg—became the most decorated First Nations soldier in the Canadian army. The irony here is that he fought for king and country abroad while at home he had grown up as a marginalized citizen living on unceded territory.

Prince came into the world in 1915, one of eleven children born to Henry and Arabella Prince. He was descended from Peguis, a renowned Salteaux leader, and grew up as part of the Brokenhead Ojibway Nation. Thanks to his father, a hunter and trapper, he became an expert tracker and marksman. As a youth, he could shoot five bullets through a playing card at 100 metres. He went to Elkhorn Residential School, then joined the Army Cadets, hoping eventually to become a lawyer. But the sudden, crushing onset of the Great Depression forced him to quit high school at sixteen to work, mostly as a tree faller.

In September 1939, when war broke out, Prince sought to enlist with the Canadian army. Like Farley Mowat, he was repeatedly turned down until June 1940, when the fall of France caused the army to be less prohibitive in accepting new recruits. Originally assigned to the Royal Canadian Engineers, Prince sailed to France and trained as a sapper or field engineer. Promoted to lance corporal in February 1941, Prince grew bored with desk duties and volun- teered to join a parachute unit—really a secret First Special Service Force of men preparing to raid targets in Nazi-occupied Norway. Instead, the men would end up in Italy.

In autumn 1942, now a sergeant, Prince trained with a joint US– Canada commando unit—later known as the “Devil’s Brigade”—in Georgia and Montana. This elite unit, initially 1,800 strong, received intense training in stealth tactics, hand-to-hand combat, explosives, rock climbing, and mountain fighting. With his tracking and hunting background, Prince shone. He became a “reconnaissance sergeant” or scout, responsible for venturing ahead and ferreting out enemy positions.

Whenever he needed to move quietly during the Anzio campaign, Prince would remove his army-issue boots in favour of moccasins. At night, he would sneak past Nazi security guards and leave messages, steal boots, or use his knife to kill enemy soldiers. He would also venture out into no man’s land, find a vantage point, and pick off any German who wandered out. . . .