By Gary Collins
The days shorten and cool. Night comes before supper. Politicians have been wearing Red Poppies for days. Old war films are on TV almost every night. Someone digs up yet another forgotten piece of footage, and the black and white images flicker across our modern coloured screens. We are all reminded of the fallen who fought and died to preserve our lifestyle.
I was not involved in any war, but I remember the stories.
I was told my Uncle Pearce Roberts sailed the world over on a mighty battleship during WWII. During the same war, another uncle, Marshall Collins, shipped on a Mine Sweeper in the English Channel, where his ship was brought down by a German bomber. He survived several hours in the water wearing a lifebelt he thought would never work, before being rescued in the wee hours of Christmas Day, 1944.
My cousin Martin Collins flew as a gunner in a Lancaster Bomber. He made 39 consecutive bombing runs over Nazi Germany. I knew him well. He seldom talked about his ordeal. Martin brought a beautiful bride, Eva, home with him who spoke ‘Proper English’. My best friend, Fred Wilkins’s mother Cathy, was a war bride from Scotland.
Then there was Uncle Garfield Way who survived both World Wars. I remember his determined jaw clenching a well-chewed pipe stem. A small man with an amazingly positive attitude and a great storyteller, who told no stories of war, but talked at length about marching past Stonehenge.
All of them had memories of war, most of which haunted them long before PTSD was a term.
Thank God I do not have their memories, though I do have memories of Armistice Day. My mind reaches back through the long years of November 11th at school. I remember the class being ordered to stand to attention for a full two minutes. It seemed like forever. There were few explanations about the men and women who had died giving us freedom. Rarely were we told about so many of our own who had died on that muddy field in France or the putrid trenches of Gallipoli. There was only the endured silence of impatient kids with heads bowed, eyelids fluttering. Someone in the back whispered a giggle. Then it was over till next year.
Never in our long wartime history had so many men been so well equipped to destroy one another as they did in 1914 after the July declaration of war by Emperor Franz Josef. The Great Plains of Europe became a battlefield of enormous proportions. Men who spoke different languages all fought the same deadly game. Young men and women were rallied forth and paraded with pageantry and the promise that this was the war to end all wars. Instead, WWI was only the harbinger of more and deadlier conflicts to come.
On the 11th day of the 11th month at precisely the 11th hour of 1918, the Armistice was signed by the new powers and the 1st World War was officially ended. More than 8 million servicemen and women had died. There was no declaration of civilians who had perished.
This senseless game of an elected minority sending a majority of our youth to fight battles which the government cannot win across boardroom tables still goes on. And though we say it cannot happen in this ‘day and age’, it still does. Nothing has changed, only our ability to destroy more, faster and from further away. Modern-day ideals and reasoning don’t seem to stem from ancient fights and merely tourniquet the flow of our young who still heed the call. Would I fight to hold on to our way of life? To the death, willingly, to ensure my grandchildren can continue to live life as I have under our flag with the red leaf of autumn.
And so on each November 11th, even before the 11th hour of that day, I will celebrate because, thank God, I have nothing to remember of the history-turning day so long ago. I have not seen battles fought on our shores. I am minded only of the sacrifice of the men and women who fought and died to keep it so. It’s a powerful feeling for me. If you can relax at your window on a cool November day, watch yellowing leaves cling to swaying trees, look out over the blue bay from that same window as I can, then you and I are both blessed.
If I try to visualize that same quiet bay crowded with warships and long-barrelled guns pointed at our town, the picture is never complete, as if it could never be. It quickly fades.
The only sound of gunfire I’ve ever heard from the ocean is the popping of shotguns from turr hunters. The only warships I’ve seen are friendly ones, if there’s such a thing. The piercing wail of an ambulance of police machines in the middle of the night is enough to awaken and disturb me with the not-knowing. I can only imagine the banshee cry of an even louder siren which portends my family, and I must vacate our home and scurry for shelter like a hunted animal. Few of us have such a memory.
I remember a full life of sure peace, total freedom unequalled on this planet. A life lived in simple luxury here by the sea which, for the most part, has been a buffer from world war. I have never known oppression from anyone. My friends and I grew and played on the landwash where the only fear was falling overboard. The concept of not being free to play as we wanted was foreign to us. Our only curfew was the call from the kitchen door from our mother’s voice announcing supper was ready. We lived then and live now, a life of complete freedom, and this I will ever remember on November 11th.
For me, all of these memories are precious, irreplaceable and cherished all the more as I age. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if D-Day had not materialized. If Britain had succumbed to the 40 nights of German bombings. If the fabric of our democracy had been overwhelmed by the Nazis. Or if the great convoys which left the safety of St. John’s harbour hadn’t continued to supply Europe’s war effort despite atrocious losses at sea.
Images of war are daily events now. Reality TV each evening at suppertime, with images of bombed buildings, mothers crying and children dying and people searching tormented streets for solace. It’s about September 11th in New York City, the closest time the reality of war has come to the western hemisphere. It’s about countries fighting and never winning.
I am now a member of the Canadian Rangers. With each training session, the possibility of war on home turf and the need to be prepared is ever poignant. We must be ever ready to defend our country. I take my job seriously.
If you are one of the so-called Baby Boomers who did not witness the war years, be grateful. Recall, if you can and respect those who did. If you are young and your concept of war comes complacent, consider for a moment the other young lives, the other streets; unsafe, deadly and unfeeling.
Be grateful that our lives are as they always were: safe, constant, privileged and free, because others had fought for us, determined that as we were, so we will continue to be. And if, like me, you can’t remember, then hopefully you will not forget. And I still bow my head for two minutes on November 11th.
