Raphael Louis Zengel

Canadian Victoria Cross Recipient of the Battle of Amiens

On 9 August 1918, with an enemy machine gun tearing into the advancing Canadian line, Sergeant Raphael Louis Zengel did not wait for someone else to silence it. He rushed roughly 200 yards ahead of his platoon, attacked the German emplacement himself, killed the officer and machine-gun operator, and scattered the remaining crew. It was an extraordinary act of battlefield initiative during the Battle of Amiens, but it was not the end of Zengel's fight that day. Before the action was over, he would be knocked unconscious by shellfire, recover, and return almost immediately to directing his men against the enemy. His courage earned him the Victoria Cross, the highest award for valour available to Canadian soldiers of his generation.

Raphael Louis Zengel was born on 11 November 1894 in Faribault, Minnesota, and moved to Saskatchewan with his mother while still a boy. Before the First World War he worked as a farm labourer. His Canadian Expeditionary Force service number was 424252, and his official personnel record associates him with the 45th Battalion, 9th Canadian Reserve Battalion, and 5th Battalion, Canadian Expeditionary Force. He ultimately served at the front with the 5th Battalion, commonly known as the 5th Battalion, Western Cavalry, part of the Canadian Corps. Library and Archives Canada records that he was promoted to Sergeant on 17 October 1917.

Long before Zengel's Victoria Cross action, he had already proved himself under fire. During fighting in Belgium in 1917, he took part in raids against German positions near Passchendaele. His conduct in one of those raids brought him the Military Medal, a decoration awarded for bravery in the field. The award was officially published in the London Gazette, Supplement 30573, 13 March 1918, page 3254, where his name appears among the Canadian recipients. The Gazette announcement records the award but does not provide a narrative citation, so the precise wording sometimes attached to Zengel's Military Medal in later accounts should not be treated as an official citation. Veterans Affairs Canada and the Department of National Defence both connect the award with his participation in the 1917 trench raids near Passchendaele.

Then came 9 August 1918, the second day of the Allied offensive around Amiens. East of Warvillers, France, Zengel was leading his platoon when he recognized that a dangerous gap had opened on the battalion's flank. A German machine gun was firing at close range into the Canadian advance. Rather than allow the position to continue inflicting casualties, Zengel surged forward well ahead of his men and attacked it. The official citation states that his action "undoubtedly saved the lives of many of his comrades." Later, when another concentration of machine-gun fire stopped the battalion, he skillfully directed his platoon's fire against the German positions. An enemy shell then rendered him unconscious for several minutes. As soon as he recovered, he resumed directing fire against the enemy.

For his conduct that day, Sergeant Raphael Louis Zengel, MM, was awarded the Victoria Cross. His award was announced in the London Gazette, No. 30922, 27 September 1918, page 11430. The citation praised his bravery, tactical skill, leadership, and what it described as his "utter disregard for personal safety." Zengel was only 23 years old when he carried out the action. His Victoria Cross placed him among the celebrated Canadian soldiers whose individual courage helped sustain the remarkable Canadian Corps advance during the Hundred Days offensive of 1918.

Zengel survived the war, although his service did not end without further hardship. Library and Archives Canada records that he was wounded in September 1918 and was eventually discharged from the Canadian Expeditionary Force on 24 April 1919. Returning to western Canada, he settled for a time in Calgary and joined the Calgary Fire Department in 1919, serving there until 1927. He later became closely associated with Rocky Mountain House, Alberta, the community that would preserve his memory long after his military career had ended.

His name became part of Canada's landscape as well as its military history. In 1936, a lake in northeastern Saskatchewan was named in his honour, although the geographical feature became known as Zengle Lake. In 1951, Mount Zengel in the Victoria Cross Range of Jasper National Park was dedicated to him. At Rocky Mountain House, Royal Canadian Legion R.L. Zengel V.C. Branch No. 8 bears his name. Zengel entrusted his Victoria Cross to the Legion, where the original is safeguarded and a replica is displayed with his other medals.

Raphael Louis Zengel died on 27 February 1977, aged 82, and was buried at Pine Grove Cemetery in Rocky Mountain House, Alberta. More than half a century had passed since Amiens, yet the story behind his Victoria Cross remained as striking as it had been in 1918: a Canadian sergeant recognized an immediate threat to his comrades, went forward alone to destroy it, was later knocked unconscious by enemy fire, and returned to the fight as soon as he could. His medals, his name on the landscape, and the Legion branch that carries his name preserve the memory of a soldier whose courage was tested not in theory, but at the moment when the lives of the men around him depended upon what he chose to do.