The soldier from Chapleau earned two medals for valour in the final months of the Second World War. Both actions tell us what he did when other soldiers were counting on him.

North of Polite | First Nations and Métis Veterans Series, Part Five | November 5, 2026

By the afternoon of March 2, 1945, the Canadian soldiers holding a cluster of buildings south of Germany’s Hochwald Forest were running out of room. Shells and mortar fire had knocked out their supporting tanks. Every officer in C Company was among the casualties, and German tanks were closing in. Acting Sergeant Charles Henry Byce took command of the men who were left. When he ordered them to withdraw, he stayed behind them with a sniper’s rifle and fired on German infantry to cover their escape.

From Chapleau to the Maas

Byce was born in Chapleau, Ontario. His mother, Louisa Saylors, was Moose Cree and came from Moose Factory. His father, Henry Byce, had earned the Distinguished Conduct Medal and the French Médaille militaire during the First World War. Charles spent part of his childhood in the residential school system. When another war came, he enlisted with the Lake Superior Regiment (Motor) and reached France in the summer of 1944.

Before dawn on January 21, 1945, Byce and 23 other men crossed the Maas River in the Netherlands in rowboats. The patrol was sent to gather information behind German lines. Byce, then an acting corporal, led a five-man team assigned to cover it. When German positions opened fire, he found two of them and silenced them with grenades. He also obtained information from a prisoner before the patrol withdrew. The men made it back safely, and Byce earned the Military Medal.

The decision to bring his men back

Six weeks later, at the Hochwald, Byce held the position as the route out narrowed, then gathered the soldiers he could reach and ordered them back under fire. The Distinguished Conduct Medal recognized his leadership that day. On the Maas, he moved toward the positions firing on his patrol. At the Hochwald, he put himself between the German infantry and the men pulling back.

What Chapleau chose to remember

In 2008, the Byce family took part in the donation of Henry’s and Charles’s medals to the Canadian War Museum. Eight years later, a monument to Charles was unveiled in Chapleau. The sculptor, Tyler Fauvelle, placed antlers in a broken circle around Byce to represent the harm that racism and residential schooling did to his connection with his culture. An eagle feather rests close to his heart. You can see his medal ribbons on the monument, but the broken circle tells a part of his story the ribbons never could.

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