John Wesley Adamson, Kawgue
John Adamson was living at Lake Laberge when he was called to join the Home Guard during the Second World War. He took the train to Skagway, Alaska and the boat to Vancouver, British Columbia and there, instead of the Home Guard, he joined the army. He was screened for three days and then trained in Wetaskiwin, Alberta for nine weeks. After that they sent him to Calgary for advanced training and he was expected to stay there for nine to ten weeks. John was one of the very few who wore the Crown Over Cross Rifles as a sharpshooter, an expert on the machine guns and the stand gun. He got fed up with the training and he shipped out with another division to Debert, Nova Scotia. He abandoned that troop and took a boat without permission to Scotland. When an officer noticed him, he ended up in front of the colonel and it turned out one other man had done the same thing. They landed in Ballachulish, Scotland and then moved to Aldershot, England. John then left with the first troop movement, landed in Belgium and went straight through France to the front. They stopped five km outside Amsterdam which had already been evacuated. They moved up behind the enemy with the Canadian Scottish 3rd Division. They moved right into Germany, and after about eight days the war was over. They were asked to volunteer to fight the Japanese and take special training in Burma for jungle warfare, so John volunteered. He was shipped back to Canada for forty days of leave and during that time the United States dropped the bomb and the war was over.1)