Henry Ashley was born and raised on the Driftpile First Nation in northern Alberta. He enlisted in the Canadian Army on 3 July 1941 in Slave Lake, Alberta. Henry was fluent in Cree and had only limited English at the time despite having attended the local mission school for seven years. He had three brothers and three sisters. Both of his parents had died when he was still a child. After leaving school, he worked as a lumberjack in the Peace River District and on the family farm.

Henry was a very good shot and since he had limited mechanical skills, the recruiter pegged him for the infantry or service corps. Henry apparently rejected that suggestion and insisted on joining the Royal Canadian Engineers.  He was assigned to the 10^th Field Squadron and soon found himself in Camp Petawawa, Ontario for training.  By February 1942, the squadron had been re-located to England. 

In August of that year, Henry was posted to ‘C’ Company of the 1^st Battalion where he spent the next two years.  When the battalion reorganized in March 1944, ‘B’ Company became the 32^nd Field Company. He was then placed in the reinforcement pool and sent to France in July 1944 to join the 2^nd Field Company in the 2^nd Canadian Infantry Divisional Engineers.

On arriving in France, the 2^nd Field Company immediately started clearing the routes through Caen, bridging the Orne River and participating in the key battles to close the Falaise Gap. They worked on the approaches to the Seine and participated in operations to cross the river. An advanced reconnaissance party from the unit were among the first Canadian soldiers to re-enter Dieppe when it fell on 1 September 1944.

By 10 September, the company was in Ostend, Belgium putting the routes in and out of the port back into operation.

This type of work continued until by the end of September,. They had worked their way as far as Antwerp and were preparing for operations to clear the Beveland Approaches beginning on the morning of 2 October. The fighting went on for weeks with heavy casualties on all sides. The engineers built bridges, cleared mines and other obstacles and kept the routes open.

On the morning of 28 October, 1 and 3 Platoons of the 2^nd Field Company were under command 11^th Field Company for the construction of  Floating Equipment Bridge (FEB) across the South Beveland Canal near Hansveert at the end of the Beveland Isthmus. They had built six bays of the bridge when they were heavily shelled. Number 1 Platoon had five wounded and 3 Platoon lost Spr Ashley and had two others wounded. Henry was 24 years old when he died. He is buried in the Bergen-Op-Zoom Canadian War Cemetery in The Netherlands.

Return to Part 5: Tributes to the Fallen Sappers of the Scheldt