Corporal William Carl Reiber

1920 - 1944  (24 years)

• Name	William Carl Reiber
  Prefix	Corporal
  Born	1920	, Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada
  Gender	Male
  Military	WW2
  Eby ID Number	Waterloo-30622P
  Died	8 Jul 1944	Buron, , France   [1]
  	Cause: killed in war
  Buried	Beny-Sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery, Reviers, , Basse-Normandie, France
  Person ID	I30622	Generations
  Last Modified	1 Dec 2024

  
  

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  William Carl Reiber

  
  

• Notes

  Reaching out for a father lost on the battlefield Englishman searching out memories of Waterloo dad WATERLOO - Peter Carl Reiber has never been to Canada. But he has a deep connection to this country that he yearns to explore. His father, William Carl Reiber, was a Canadian soldier from Waterloo, sent to England in the Second World War. William was killed in action in 1944 when Peter was nine months old. From his home in England, Peter wonders today: Are there any war veterans in Canada who remember his father and can tell him what he was like, as a soldier and a young man? And so he is reaching out across the ocean for answers he may never find about a foreign father he never knew, killed in a battle that haunts us still. "There's a little hole that needs filling," he says. Cpl. William Reiber served with the local Highland Light Infantry. He was killed on July 8, 1944 in the village of Buron, France. Liberating the village from the Nazi enemy, a key victory, cost the regiment 62 dead, 200 wounded. In a daylong battle, the regiment lost half its assaulting force. "It was a baptism of fire and blood of the harshest kind," says historian Terry Copp, of Wilfrid Laurier University. Sixty-five years later, the regiment's first and greatest battle still casts its shadow over families who lost sons, and over veterans who survived. Kitchener's Don Matthews was 19 when he ran through whistling bullets to help dislodge the Nazis from Buron. He did not know William Reiber. "It was actually horrible," says Matthews, 85. "Guys were falling all over, right, left. It was tough." Irene Reiber, William's British war bride, was pregnant with the couple's second son when a war telegram announced her husband's death. Peter's younger brother was born four months later. Irene named him William. Peter knows little about his parents' wartime romance. It is shrouded in secrets lost to time. Irene met William Reiber in England. She was a civilian, about 19. Her parents had moved her out of London earlier in the war to keep her safe from German bombs. He was around 21. They married in 1943, a few weeks after Peter was born. In documents and letters, William emerges as a young man in love. He faced the uncertain future of a soldier at war. But he seemed keen to launch a family. And he was willing to do the right thing by his bride. Irene was always guarded with details about her out-of-wedlock pregnancy, likely scandalous at the time. Three months after Peter was born, William named himself as the father on the birth certificate. "There was probably an adoption and he gave me his name," Peter says. After William was killed, Canada gave Irene a small pension. She never moved to Canada, but always displayed a photo of her husband in her living room. She died last year at 85. Growing up, Peter knew his father had been a Canadian soldier. He cherishes a fading picture of his mother cradling him as an infant, husband William by her side. He has his father's cap badge from the Highland Light Infantry. He keeps a letter William sent to his bride from a battlefield in France. "Give Peter a big hug," William wrote. He often wondered how his life might have turned out had his father survived. "I'd always say, if things had been the other way, I'd have been a lumberjack today," he says. When Peter was a young man, he had William's sense of duty in mind when he joined the British army. Later, he worked the docks and drove trucks. Now 66, he's mostly retired, a married father of two. He could never afford to visit Canada. But over the years he has kept in touch with curious cousins in Cambridge and Waterloo. They sent family pictures. A Canadian cousin visited him in England. But they could not provide many insights about his father. Family records and documents reveal William Reiber attached soles in a shoe factory, possibly in Waterloo, before he enlisted and left for England, likely in 1942. He was the only son of a family of limited means and had two older sisters. He embarked from England on June 4, 1944 and landed in Normandy, France on D-Day, June 6, after the beaches were secured. On July 8, he was launched into battle against ferocious SS troops and fanatical Hitler Youth. The Nazi enemy had spent a month after D-Day digging in on the outskirts of Caen. They did not yield ground easily. A published account indicates William served with B Company, 12 Platoon. His squad, armed with rifles and grenades, was ordered to charge and destroy two German gun positions. The enemy guns turned on them. Cpl. Reiber "ran into a machine-gun nest. He was killed \emdash the whole damn section was killed," Sgt. Jimmy Kelly later recalled, in a battle account titled Bloody Buron. William Reiber was 23. He is gratefully remembered today as a Son of Waterloo. His picture hangs on a memorial wall at Waterloo City Hall. After the war, his grieving sisters and parents never wanted to discuss his death. They are all now deceased. "I know he was very, very treasured," says Helen Stillaway, of Waterloo. William Reiber was her uncle. Helen, 68, was two when he was killed. She has never met William's two sons, her cousins in England, but has kept in touch with Peter across the Atlantic, and she hopes he finds some answers. "Even as a child, I kept wanting to know about these two boys in England," Helen says. Peter has seen his father's grave in France. It was hard to do. "You can't talk to anybody, because you'd make yourself look silly," he says. "You've just got to walk away, take a few deep breaths, and then come back to normality." Now, he hopes to glean a few personal details about his lost father, understanding it may be too late. The few remaining veterans of the Highland Light Infantry held their final reunion last year. Some plan to gather at the Cambridge armoury today, to hear historians discuss their beloved regiment. There may be no one left who remembers his dad. But perhaps, just perhaps, someone knows something that can help span the decades, to reunite them again. The Waterloo Region Record - April 23, 2010 By Jeff Outhit, Record staff _________________________ Sixty-six years after giving his life in the Second World War, a local man is still able to unite family and friends May 05, 2010 By Jeff Outhit, Record staff WATERLOO \emdash There's this saying: You live as long as you are remembered. Sixty-five years after he gave his life for Canada, Bill Reiber is dearly remembered, and still bringing friends and family together. Reiber was 23 when a German machine-gun cut him down in Nazi-occupied France, in 1944. He left an infant son and a pregnant British widow in England. Back home in Waterloo, two sisters and his parents grieved. His English son, Peter Reiber, is now reaching out across the Atlantic, seeking memories of the foreign father he never knew. He has found some good ones, thanks to Louis Steckenreiter and Anni Saunders. Bill Reiber was their neighbourhood pal when they were young. They have never forgotten how much fun they had, and are pleased to share their memories with Peter, who has never visited Canada. "It made me feel great," Peter, 66, says from his home in England. "It sort of fills a void." In the late 1930s, before the world went crazy, Bill, Louis and Anni were teens growing up on Elgin Street. Waterloo was so small then, it spanned just a few blocks on either side of King Street. Everybody knew everybody. You could still find chickens in backyards. People grew vegetables not as a hobby, but to help feed themselves in hard times. There were cars around, but many cars spent the winters on blocks, because the roads were so often impassable. Louis and Anni \emdash her name was Thiessen then \emdash remember their childhood pal as active and helpful. They would hang out together, visiting on front porches, playing cards \emdash Michigan rummy was a favourite \emdash throwing baseballs, skating outside, and riding bicycles. "Children today, they have the internet," says Anni, 86. "But we had so much more." Bill had a scouting background and knew how to tie knots. So the kids turned to him, to attach ropes to branches. Then they would swing from tree to tree, like Tarzan. Sometimes they would swing across nearby Laurel Creek. "I was the only girl on the street, and that got me included in a lot of fun things that boys do," recalls Anni, who seems as full of beans today as she was back then. They played hide-and-seek and road games of all kinds. They tobogganed and skated on the creek, hoping not to fall through the ice in the spring. A neighbour tried to teach them cricket but it didn't take. They would sit in a big tree at the Steckenreiter farmhouse and pretend they were in an airplane. When Louis flooded his front yard for a skating rink, Bill was the only guy with lungs strong enough to blow the water from the hose before they stored it. In summer Bill would help Louis mow the large lawn around his home. "He was bigger, taller and stronger than I was," recalls Louis, 88. "He was kind of a protector." "He was a real good-hearted person. He was never angry or hard to get along with," Anni says. "I thought a lot of him." After he left school, Bill found work attaching soles to shoes at the Goodrich rubber plant at King and Victoria streets, in Kitchener. After Canada declared war in 1939, he answered the call to enlist in the local Highland Light Infantry. When Bill was a soldier in training, he would sometimes return to Elgin Street on a weekend leave. Louis and Anni would then drive him back to his barracks in Stratford. After he went overseas, they mailed him a parcel. He wrote Louis letters from England. They were deeply saddened when he was killed in action. But they also understood that many young men were dying every day in the Second World War. "It was something you expected, practically," Anni says. War deaths were "just something that you absorbed and said, 'OK, let's get on with it.' " For years afterwards, Louis kept Bill's picture in his wallet. When he had a son to call his own in 1952, he named him partly after Bill. Six decades later, Louis and Anni were startled to see their good pal's picture in The Record, accompanied by a plea from his son. They knew only vaguely that Bill had married a British woman. Anni is not surprised to learn that he was eager to start his own family in 1943, even while at war and so far from home. She remembers vividly when Bill's older sister had her first baby, before he went overseas. "He ran around the place yelling that he was an uncle," she recalls. "He was ecstatic that he had reached that stage in life." jouthit@therecord.com The Waterloo Region Record 6 May 2010

  
  

• Sources

  [S602] News - ON, Waterloo, Kitchener - The Waterloo Region Record (March 2008- ), Reaching out for a father lost on the battlefield - April 23, 2010.

  
  

• Event Map

  Born - 1920 - , Waterloo Region, Ontario, Canada Buried - - Beny-Sur-Mer Canadian War Cemetery, Reviers, , Basse-Normandie, France  = Link to Google Earth