Filip Konowal "Sergeant Filip Konowal / Sergent Filip Konowal" by BiblioArchives / LibraryArchives is licensed under CC BY 2.0.
Your feat is the most courageous and incomparable in my army. Please accept my gratitude personally.
King George V to Filip Konowal, October 1917
Filip Konowal was a Ukrainian-Canadian soldier, the only Ukrainian to be awarded the Victoria Cross, the highest military honor in the United Kingdom.
He was born on September 15, 1888, in the village of Kutkivtsi in Podillia (now Kamianets-Podilsky district, Khmelnytsky region) into a peasant family. He was an apprentice to a mason. After serving in the Russian army (1908-1913), he was sent to Siberia, where he left for Canada in search of a better life.
During World War I, he joined the 77th Canadian Infantry Battalion. He fought in France, where he gained recognition. On August 21, 1917, near the town of Lens, surrounded by German soldiers under constant machine gun fire, Corporal Konowal moved to a machine gun nest and, according to legend, defeated ten machine gunners in hand-to-hand combat and took an enemy machine gun for his unit. The next day, he successfully attacked an enemy machine gun nest again. In 1917, King George V personally awarded him the Victoria Cross at a military parade in front of Buckingham Palace for this brave act.
Filip Konowal served until 1919. Afterward, he never found a decent job due to health problems caused by his wounds. His corps supported him, and he worked as a security guard and janitor in the House of Commons of the Canadian Parliament. Thanks to the help of his fellow Ukrainians he could attend the Victoria Cross Honors in London in 1956.
The hero of the First World War, Filip Konowal, died on June 3, 1959, in Hull, Quebec. His regiment buried him at the Notre Dame de Lourdes Cemetery in Ottawa.
The Canadian War Museum keeps the Victoria Cross and other medals he received. His feat is still remembered in Canada and the United Kingdom as an example of military valor. Filip Konowal was proclaimed the Royal Canadian Legion’s Branch 360 (Konowal Branch) patron. Memorial plaques in his honor were unveiled in Ottawa, Toronto, New Westminster, Dauphin (Canada), Lens (France), and at the British Embassy in Ukraine in Kyiv. Two Ukrainian cadets at the Royal Military College of Canada receive a yearly scholarship named after F. Konowal.
