The little coat displayed among the trappings of war in the Olds Legion intrigued Saskatchewan songwriter Alan Buick.
“It didn’t seem to fit in with all the other things on display . . . It was a little girl’s coat and it had soldier’s buttons sewn on it. I wondered why was it there?” said Buick, who was performing a country music concert at the Legion when he first spotted the coat in 2004.
“I wanted to hear the story behind it.”
It turned out the real-life story had a fairy-tale ending and prompted Buick to become a first-time author.
His book — The Little Coat: The Bob and Sue Elliott Story — was published by the small Saskatchewan firm, Driverworks Ink, and is now selling in major bookstores.
The story starts with a Scottish-born farm kid from the Olds area named Bob Elliott, who lied about his age to follow his three older brothers into the Canadian army. He was 15 and tall for his age, and it was 1941 — the Second World War needed soldiers.
After undergoing military training in Winnipeg, Halifax and England, Elliott was given a daunting first assignment: his tank unit was to help storm Juno Beach on D-Day.
Elliott’s tank was hit by a mortar bomb and three of his crewmen burned to death shortly after the difficult Normandy landing. Elliott somehow only lost part of a finger, and went on to help liberate France and Holland from German occupation.
After fighting the enemy with bayonets during the miserable, prolonged Battle of Scheldt, which took place in a flooded estuary, he helped hold the Allied line at Maas River in Holland.
It was there that he met a plucky little girl named Sussie Cretier.
The 10-year-old gave the battle-weary Canadian soldiers a friendly greeting whenever she passed by to fetch milk. Sometimes she would ask them for cigarettes for her father.
The cheerful and inquisitive Sussie became a bright diversion for the troops, who often gave her chewing gum and chocolate and let her climb on their tank.
Some soldiers called her their lucky charm. “She was like their mascot,” said Buick, who added Sussie was even allowed to eat in their mess hall.
This was a big deal, since Sussie and the rest of her family had often gone hungry after being forced to flee from the occupying Germans.
Sussie’s parents, Willem and Geert Cretier, who had once sheltered a Jewish girl, had to go into hiding because they were part of the Dutch resistance.
After living for a time under the floor of an aunt’s house, Sussie’s father decided the family’s only hope was to cross the dangerous no-man’s land and get behind the Allied line on the Maas River.
At their last bit of tree cover, Willem instructed his wife Geert and their three children to run as fast as they could toward the dyke. “You must weave, duck, slow down and speed up so as not to make yourself an easy target.”
The Cretiers ran two km under German fire and responding cover fire from the Canadians, but every member of the family made it across the Allied line unscathed.
Sussie later told Buick that she had a special fondness for the Canadian soldiers who had travelled so far to help Dutch people like her family.
And of all the enlisted men, she considered Elliott, who was nine years older and very protective, her favourite.
The Central Alberta soldier was eventually befriended by the whole Cretier family and thought of Sussie as a precocious little sister. With Christmas approaching, Elliott noticed the little girl’s thread-bare coat and decided to surprise her with a new one.
He and his comrades asked a nearby seamstress to sew a little coat out of a Canadian army blanket.
Each soldier donated a button from their uniform — and Sussie was so taken with her special gift that she kept it her whole life.
Elliott returned to live in Calgary after the war and Sussie grew up in Holland.
Both married spouses they met in their respective countries and had children. They only kept in touch with short notes and Christmas cards — until 1981, when Willem and Geert invited Elliott back to the Netherlands to help celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.
The former soldier, who had long ago become a grain elevator company manager, had just separated from his wife after 32 years of marriage and decided he needed a change of scenery.
He was met at the Dutch airport by a middle-aged Sussie, who held a card with his name printed on it. But even without the placard, the two claimed they would have known each other.
Sussie, still vivacious, became Elliott’s tour guide through Holland. Eventually, she revealed that she was also estranged from her husband.
This time, the two developed different feelings for each other and Elliott eventually asked Sussie to return with him to Canada.
In 1984, the couple were married and, upon retirement, divided their time between in Edmonton and The Netherlands — where they are currently residing.
For Buick, who met the Elliotts briefly while they were in Alberta, but mostly pieced together their story through emails, the romantic, fairy-tale ending was a “bonus.”
Buick said he was immensely fascinated by the war-time heroism shown by the solider and the little girl. Sussie often displayed great courage under stress — she once saved her family by starting a distracting argument after her little brother blurted out a derisive comment about German soldiers within earshot of a group of them. “The things she did, for somebody so young, were quite amazing.”
As for the Elliotts, they consider Buick’s story “nothing but the truth.”
Bob, 84, hopes it reminds readers of the horror of war and the need to keep a lasting peace.
“We suffered very much, and never ever will forget what the Canadians did for Holland,” said Sussie, 75. She plans to attend her country’s 65 years of freedom celebration on May 5.
Writing the Elliotts’ story not only broadened Buick’s knowledge of the Second World War, but also allowed him to make a solid friendship with a couple he hopes to visit next May in The Netherlands.
And the little coat?
While it initially hurt Sussie to part with it, she allowed the fragile garment to be displayed in the Olds Legion — until the Canadian War Museum learned of it.
Now her girlhood coat is preserved for posterity in the Ottawa museum — along with other artifacts that tell of the big and small sacrifices Canadians soldiers made in countries far from home. “We must never, never forget,” she said.
The Little Coat: The Bob and Sue Elliott Story sells for $19.95 ($1 from each book goes to the Royal Canadian Legion). It can also be ordered on-line at www.thelittlecoat.com.
lmichelin@www.reddeeradvocate.com