Rev. Mike Dalton celebrates mass with Canadian troops in Europe during the Second World War. Dalton, who died Monday at 106, used his army Jeep as an altar.
Priest a wartime legend
By Marty Gervais, Windsor StarApril 7, 2009
He was a soldier to the end. His threadbare army tunic hung on the wall, and his room was filled with religious icons, rosaries and holy pictures.
And when you spoke to him, his words were about the men he knew on the battlefields of France when he rigged up a makeshift altar on the hood of his jeep and said mass for them.
The photos from the Second World War show these anxious men kneeling, their heads bowed, silent in the muddy fields just hours before they were sent into battle.
And when age finally wore him down -- long after the war and years of serving parishes all over the London diocese including Windsor, Woodslee and Kingsville -- this old priest told me it wouldn't stop him from saying mass in his bed at the nursing home.
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