# Obits:  Maj Si Steele, and LtCol Paddy Boden



## bossi (1 Sep 2000)

Two obits to share 
(since I‘ve a pet theory about how hockey - aka "war on ice" - is a metaphor for military training; while the second obit had a passage which leapt out at me:  "... [Boden] was modest, well mannered and endowed with a strong sense of humour and of the ridiculous. He read widely and voraciously; and he adored dogs, of which he always had a selection. 
In war he was wholly unflappable, and he fully understood the men he was leading; they, in response, gave of their best for him. ")



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(from the National Post)
Major awarded Military Cross for bravery 
First Canadian to receive honour in Normandy invasion
National Post, with files from Greg Childs 
Major Si Steele, who has died aged 84, won a Military Cross for bravery in Normandy and was the longest-serving field officer of the Essex Scottish Regiment during the Second World War. In one incident, Maj. Steele and his driver managed to bluff their way out of captivity.
In December, 1944, Maj. Steele was in Germany where the Wehrmacht was fighting on home soil, counterattacking the Canadian advance. He and his driver, Private Pete Markowski, were cut off from their own regiment. Fighting their way back, they captured a farmhouse but then Maj. Steele was wounded in the leg by a burst of machine gun fire.
The Germans captured him but Pte. Markowski hid behind a hedgerow. He waited until a German medic was treating Maj. Steele‘s wounds and then walked, unarmed, up to the German and suggested it would be easier if he took the major back to their own lines. The German agreed and the two made it back to Canadian lines. If Maj. Steele had stayed in German care he could well have died from his leg wounds.
Telford Ezra Steele, known as Si, was born on Aug. 31, 1915, at Fort Erie, Ont.
At the end of the First World War, when he was three years old, the family moved to Chatham, Ont., where his father worked for Union Gas. He went to Chatham Vocational High School and was a star hockey player.
After high school he worked at Union Gas and played for the Chatham Maroons, a farm team of the Montreal Maroons, then a team in the National Hockey League. When war came again in 1939, he enlisted in the Kent Regiment, whose job it was to train machine gun crews for service overseas.
He rose through the ranks and was a sergeant just before he was sent overseas. He was promoted to second lieutenant. Arriving in England just after the 1942 Dieppe raid, he asked to be assigned to the Essex Scottish, which had lost most of its men in the operation.
Just before the invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944, the company commander was injured in a ball game and Si Steele was promoted from captain to acting major. He and his troops landed in Normandy in late June.
One of his military colleagues described Maj. Steele as an ordinary man who did extraordinary things in war. The incident in which he won his Military Cross was extraordinary for a man who had never done anything more violent than throw a body check before the war.
In early July, 1944, he and his men were ordered to take an orchard and a farmhouse from where Germans were slowing an armoured advance near the Norman city of Caen.
Maj. Steele led his men through intense fire to knock out the German position. "The success of this operation can be largely attributed to the ability, aggression, spirit and courage of this officer," read the citation of the award.
He received the Military Cross in a field ceremony from Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. It was the first MC awarded to a Canadian in the Normandy invasion. The Military Cross is an award for bravery in action. He was also mentioned in dispatches twice for other actions.
Once while fighting in a suburb of Ostend, Belgium, he used Bofors anti-aircraft guns to fire at ground level at a fortified German position. He captured 350 Germans without any Canadian casualties. He then had to protect the German prisoners from vengeful Belgian civilians who wanted to kill the soldiers after more than four years of occupation.
In a bizarre incident in the battle of Schelde estuary, Maj. Steele captured a well-dressed German officer who was on his way to visit a female friend. The German had maps indicating every troop location in the area and once again Maj. Steele was able to defeat and capture a number of positions.
After the war, Maj. Steele spent a great deal of time in England recuperating from his wounds before returning home to Chatham. Although he kept his leg, his hockey-playing career was over -- but he coached minor league hockey.
He soon started work at International Harvester and stayed there until retirement in 1975. He was president of the local cancer society and headed the horticultural club.
Maj. Steele and his wife, Norah, had two daughters, Kathleen and Mary Ann. He died of pneumonia.
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(from the Guardian)
Lieutenant-Colonel Paddy Boden 
LIEUTENANT-COLONEL PADDY BODEN, who has died aged 85, was awarded an MC for his actions when commanding a company of the 2nd Battalion, the Rifle Brigade, in January and February 1942. 
After a successful attack at the end of 1941, when the British had cleared the Axis forces from Cyrenaica and had relieved Tobruk, Rommel received further reinforcements. These included better-armoured tanks and superior guns, and enabled Rommel to launch a counter-attack which drove the 8th Army back to the Gazala-Bir Hakim line. 
When this began in January 1942, Boden was commanding his company in the area south-east of Benghazi. He had been operating in a column in the Antelat area when, on January 26, he received orders to withdraw. Thanks to his skilful handling of his company, the column withdrew from a confused situation without any losses - and knocked out an enemy gun and various other vehicles in the process. 
The next month, on February 22, Boden was second-in-command of a column in the Charruba area when it was suddenly attacked from two sides by a superior enemy force. In the ensuing mêlée, the column commander and also the RHA troop leader were taken prisoner. Boden at once took control of the situation. He collected two 25 lb guns, got them into action and organised the orderly extraction of the remainder of the column without further loss, knocking out another enemy gun and armoured car. 
The citation for Boden‘s MC further noted that he had commanded his company with conspicuous ability throughout the previous two months - November and December 1941 - when it had been in almost continual conflict with the enemy and when he had been operating a column detached from the battalion. 
Patrick Anthony Drummond Boden was born on March 12 1915, the son of a Rifle Brigade major who was killed in action in France in 1914. The Bodens were originally lace makers and landowners in Derbyshire, but Patrick spent his early years in London and Yorkshire. He went to Eton (where he was a house captain) and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he read Modern Languages (French and German). 
He was commissioned into the Rifle Brigade in 1935, and before the war served with the 2nd Battalion in Malta, India and Palestine. He was posted to the Western Desert in 1941, serving with the 2nd and 8th Battalions. After North Africa, Boden attended the Staff College and subsequently went to the 1st Battalion, which he commanded in the North-West Europe campaign in 1944 and 1945. During this period he was mentioned in des-patches. 
After the war he was GSO2 in 11 Armoured Brigade, and then chairman of the training centre, BAOR. He was GSO2 at the Staff College, Camberley, in 1952, and in command of the 1st Battalion, the Rifle Brigade, in Kenya and Malaya from 1955 to 1957. Here he was awarded an OBE. He returned to the War Office in 1958 as assistant adjutant general, and was then adviser to King Hussein at the Jordan Staff College in 1959-60. 
Paddy Boden was a man of many talents. He was an excellent pianist and could play the accordion; he was an outstanding mimic, a superb skier (he was a former Army slalom champion and was still skiing in his late seventies), a skilled photographer, an accomplished gardener, an above average golfer and a keen horseman. He hunted in Hampshire and Dorset and took the big fences in his stride. 
He was extremely sociable and thought nothing of driving up to Scotland for a party. At his own parties, he would invariably see to it that his guests‘ glasses were kept filled. He loved music - classical and jazz - and was a wonderful dancer. He was modest, well mannered and endowed with a strong sense of humour and of the ridiculous. He read widely and voraciously; and he adored dogs, of which he always had a selection. 
In war he was wholly unflappable, and he fully understood the men he was leading; they, in response, gave of their best for him. Although firm, he was kind and friendly. His period of command in Malaya was notable for its success and consistency in the anti-terrorist role. 
He married, in 1959, Jane Huttendach, a colonel‘s daughter, who survives him, with a son and a step-daughter. 
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