Frederick Thomas Campbell was born in Hibbing, Minnesota, the son of Frederick and Annie Campbell McLeod who had moved from South Nelson, New Brunswick with two older sisters to Hibbing 10 years earlier. Fred, his mother and one sister returned to South Nelson in 1928. Fred’s father died in Hibbing in 1929. Before enlisting, Fred worked as a truck driver. There is very little in Sapper Campbell’s personnel file concerning time in the army. In many ways, he was but one of the thousands of young men who for a range of reasons choose to join up during the war. Most survived, came home and carried on. He was not so lucky.

After enlisting in Petawawa on 25 July 1942, he was attached for training to the 23^rd Field Company. In October, Fred was included in a group of soldiers sent to the 15^th Field Company to form a composite unit was sent to Medicine Hat, Alberta to help construct a prisoner-of-war camp. On returning to Petawawa, it was long before Fred embarked for the United Kingdom on 24 December. In the UK, taken on strength of the Canadian Engineer Reinforcement Centre (CERU) located at Guillemont Barracks in Hampshire in southern England. The CERU was organized into holding companies whose main task was completing the individual training started in Canada before new arrivals were sent out to units. As well, the CERU sent troops on temporary assignments to various construction projects the RCE undertook in the early days of the war. In May 1943, he was placed on the X-4 list as a reinforcement for the 1^st Canadian Infantry Divisional Engineers. He joined the 4^th Field Company in Sicily on 25 July 1943, two weeks after the landing and one year after his enrollment.

The following day, the 3^rd Canadian Infantry Brigade moved forward with the 4^th Field Company under command to protect the flank of the 78^th Division as they advanced on the town of Adrano. For the sappers, the next ten days were some of the most intense in the Sicilian Campaign. Their main role was mine clearance and route repair.  As they moved forward, they main task was to supporting infantry by clearing mines and obstacles from their path and repairing routes to allow follow-on traffic. They were under the constant fire from the enemy and by the night of 5/6 August, they had lost one officer killed in action and several more officers and men wounded. In the last action of the Sicilian campaign, the Royal 22^e Regiment made a bloodless crossing of the Simeto River. Even though the front line was stabilized and victory was in sight, the sappers still had several days of hard work to prepare vehicle crossings. The situation over those last few busy days was confusing and only two days later did the company’s War Diary record that three sappers had been killed and two wounded that night. Among the dead was Sapper Frederick Campbell. He is buried in the Canadian War Cemetery in Agira.

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