YELLOWKNIFE - Remembering his father's contribution at Vimy Ridge is important for one Yellowknifer.

"My father was at Vimy Ridge and was, in total, twice awarded for bravery in the field," Jack Adderley said of his father George Adderley.

Jack Adderley holds one of the medals his father earned during the battle of Vimy Ridge during the First World War. Adderley said that he carries the medals close to his heart whenever he goes marching. - Jessica Klinkenberg/NNSL photo

At age 84, Jack Adderley, a veteran of the Second World War, remembers his father with great fondness.

"The strange part of that was I found this out years later my father hated killing anything."

So George Adderley signed up to be a stretcher-bearer, Jack Adderley said.

It was after the battle at Vimy Ridge that his father received his two medals.

"He never killed one person during the war. But he saved the lives of dozens and dozens of men," Jack Adderley said with pride.

"He watched all the killing and it made him sick."

Jack Adderley said that though his father never killed a man, his life was in danger every time he went out onto the field to bring wounded men back.

"He applied for a job as a stretcher-bearer. It was a dangerous job. They were the targets of the German soldiers," Jack Adderley said.

Stretcher-bearers had no guns on them, and the danger of the job made it difficult for the army to find anyone willing to do it.

"No one would take it, but he volunteered."

As he talked about his father, Jack Adderley would pause occasionally, his tone growing thoughtful as he recalled the man who he would march with back in Canada.

"After the war, he came home. He joined the Royal Canadian Legion" said Adderley.

"I used to walk with him during the many parades the veterans used to make.

"He said when I started I was about nine. I held his hand when we marched all the time.

"That's how I learned how to march."

George died in the 1940s while Jack was serving in the Canadian navy during the Second World War.

It was George Adderley's experiences in the army that made him push his son towards the navy instead.

"I had to wait until I was 19 to join the navy. He wouldn't let me join until I was old enough."

Jack Adderley recalled his father's words to him when he said he wanted to join the navy: "Ah Jackie, you get in the navy. I don't want you in the army."

"You'll always have a place to sleep and a hot meal. That's something we never had in the trenches," Jack Adderley recalled his father's words, lilting them to imitate his father's English accent.

Jack Adderley said that his father, who is originally from Yorkshire, England, had only been in Canada for three or four months before England declared war during the First World War.

"He was a minor and he wanted to come over to Canada. Canada declared war and he joined right away."

In 1917, 15,000 Canadians from four divisions worked together for the first time to take the strategic point of Vimy Ridge in France.

Of those men, 3,598 were killed and more than 7,000 were injured. Jack Adderley's father was one of the men that took to the field to bring back the injured men.

Jack Adderley's father also faced one of the greatest horrors of the war; he was one of the many soldiers who had to deal with the mustard gas that came across the field as part of the German offense.

"He was gassed. The allies had no inkling of gas," he said.

"When the Germans started using poison gas they didn't know what was happening to them.

"To make it worse my father said there was no water."

The men took their putties ñ bandages wrapped around their lower legs ñ and urinated on them to hold over their mouths against the gas.

"He was badly gassed, and his lungs were just about burned out."

Jack Adderley said that when his father came home from the war he wasn't well.

"When he was discharged from the hospital Ö he was a wreck. He just couldn't breathe."

By the time Jack Adderley returned from the Second World War his father was dead.

It is illegal to wear the medals of another soldier.

After speaking with a politician to make sure it was okay, Jack Adderley has come up with a solution.

"I cannot wear my father's medals, and I've always marched with him.

"I wanted to make sure it's not against the law. I want to carry them with me in a bag under my clothes Ö next to my heart."

He thinks that more of the youth of today should do that, in remembrance of their fathers and grandfathers.

"I say wear them next to your heart, it's near your father."

As Jack Adderley spoke of his father's contribution, his grandson was on his way to visit Vimy Ridge with classmates from St Patrick high school.

Sue Franklin, Jack Adderley's daughter, said her father was overjoyed that his grandson was going.

"He's realizing my father's dream of seeing Vimy Ridge," said Franklin.

Her father never had the opportunity to visit the site himself.

Franklin said that it was an important time for both her son and her grandfather.