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“I was buried alive,” 97-year-old Second World War veteran Fred Arsenault told me.
An enemy shell landed so close to the young Cape Breton Highlander private that he was covered in a shower of earth. Miraculously unwounded save for a ruptured eardrum, his brothers in arms dug Arsenault and he continued the fight, through the battles of Ortona and Monte Cassino, north through Italy and into France. Once, a German sniper shot and killed the man standing beside him.
On Remembrance Day, Arsenault was front and centre in his wheelchair, his row of medals and campaign stars pinned on the grey blanket that wrapped him against the November cold.
Fred Arsenault took part in the parade at the end of the National Remembrance Day Ceremony at the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Saturday, November 11, 2017.
I’d met Fred the day before at the Canadian War Museum when his son Ron, and daughter-in-law, Betty, wheeled him into the Memorial Hall, that sacred place where on Nov. 11 at 11 a.m., the sun’s rays fall across the gravestone of ‘A Soldier of the Great War, Known Unto God.” A crowd of schoolchildren were already inside sitting crosslegged as the Arsenaults entered.
The group sat together in silence as they watched the sunbeam’s traverse. I lost count of the handshakes and ‘Thank you sirs” I heard as the students filed out.
It has not always been so.
“We became so complacent,” Laurie Pederson tells me as we waited in the shadow of the National War Memorial for the parade of veterans to pass. “I’m a baby boomer. We were just like ‘Ah the poppies. Oh well.’
“But I must say that now, I am so excited to see millions of people who wear the poppies, not just for show, but because they understand.”
Laurie Pederson as the parade passed after the National Remembrance Day Ceremony at the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Saturday, November 11, 2017.
Pederson was wearing a red jacket from the 100th anniversary ceremonies at Vimy Ridge, which she attended last April in France. To her chest were pinned the miniatures of her father’s medals pinned to her chest.
Capt. Colin Rutherford landed on Juno Beach a few days after D-Day and fought through Normandy and the Falaise Pocket before being wounded by machine-gun fire on the French-Belgian border. Pederson and her dad used to go together to the Cenotaph in Victoria on Remembrance Day until his death in 2005.
She came to Ottawa especially for Saturday’s ceremonies.
“We went to Vimy along with 26,000 others, so I wanted to compete the journey and be here today,” she told me.
I ask her what it meant to be here.
“Memories of those who have served faithfully, with the greatest cost of all. And the ones who came back and kept the story alive,” she said, fighting back tears.
“I’m married to a Yank. He was in the U.S. Navy. He told me that when the Americans stopped wearing their poppies, they basically stopped remembering. That really bothered him. Now as a Canadian, he’s so proud to wear the poppy. That symbol must never, ever be lost.”
In 2010, Canada’s last veteran of the First World War, John Babcock, died. And steadily, time trims the ranks of Second World War veterans too, fewer and frailer each Remembrance Day.
My own family’s direct connection to the Second World War ended this spring, with the death of my uncle Noel Shanks, a Lancaster bomber reargunner. My father and five uncles also served, among them John, the Stirling bomber pilot who went on to become a doctor and never talked about the war, and my Uncle Bill, an army medic who in the fighting on Juno Beach was both covered with the guts of his best friend and delivered the baby of a French civilian.
They and others are in my thoughts as I bow my head for the two minutes of silence.
“It brings back a lot of memories. Not too many good ones,” Henry Decker tells me. At 92, he still fits into the khaki battledress of the North Nova Scotia Highlanders.
Decker arrived in Europe on Jan. 1, 1945 and stayed on as part of the Allied army of occupation in Germany. When he returned to Nova Scotia, he resumed a successful career in the forest industry. But the nightmares continued long after the war was over.
“I had them for years,” he said. “War related. You’d wake up not knowing where you were.”
His doctor diagnosed Decker with a “nervous stomach” and convinced him to stop worrying. It worked.
Arsenault came home to Prince Edward Island and carried on for decades as a farmer on the west island.
My own uncles all returned home too, young men aged beyond their years and became dentists and librarians, engineers and airline executives. Having fought for freedom, they resumed their lives, guiding Canada through an unparalleled period of wealth and growth.
At Saturday’s ceremonies, I ask veteran William McLachlan, 94, what Remembrance Day means to him.
William McLachlan during the National Remembrance Day Ceremony at the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Saturday, November 11, 2017.
McLachlan, who served as a radar technician in Newfoundland and Europe, reaches into his pocket for a scrap of folded paper. It is a poem credited to Royal Canadian Air Force veteran Arnie Hanenburg that he reads aloud.
“You gave your lives in World War II
And even though I fought with you
I lived — was it my due?
You bought me time.
“Time to see my family grow
See my grandkids faces glow
Things that you will never know
You bought me time…”
“And now I’m over ninety-three
I’ve had a life both full and free
I thank you all eternally
You bought me time.”
bcrawford@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/getBAC
查看原文...
An enemy shell landed so close to the young Cape Breton Highlander private that he was covered in a shower of earth. Miraculously unwounded save for a ruptured eardrum, his brothers in arms dug Arsenault and he continued the fight, through the battles of Ortona and Monte Cassino, north through Italy and into France. Once, a German sniper shot and killed the man standing beside him.
On Remembrance Day, Arsenault was front and centre in his wheelchair, his row of medals and campaign stars pinned on the grey blanket that wrapped him against the November cold.
Fred Arsenault took part in the parade at the end of the National Remembrance Day Ceremony at the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Saturday, November 11, 2017.
I’d met Fred the day before at the Canadian War Museum when his son Ron, and daughter-in-law, Betty, wheeled him into the Memorial Hall, that sacred place where on Nov. 11 at 11 a.m., the sun’s rays fall across the gravestone of ‘A Soldier of the Great War, Known Unto God.” A crowd of schoolchildren were already inside sitting crosslegged as the Arsenaults entered.
The group sat together in silence as they watched the sunbeam’s traverse. I lost count of the handshakes and ‘Thank you sirs” I heard as the students filed out.
It has not always been so.
“We became so complacent,” Laurie Pederson tells me as we waited in the shadow of the National War Memorial for the parade of veterans to pass. “I’m a baby boomer. We were just like ‘Ah the poppies. Oh well.’
“But I must say that now, I am so excited to see millions of people who wear the poppies, not just for show, but because they understand.”
Laurie Pederson as the parade passed after the National Remembrance Day Ceremony at the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Saturday, November 11, 2017.
Pederson was wearing a red jacket from the 100th anniversary ceremonies at Vimy Ridge, which she attended last April in France. To her chest were pinned the miniatures of her father’s medals pinned to her chest.
Capt. Colin Rutherford landed on Juno Beach a few days after D-Day and fought through Normandy and the Falaise Pocket before being wounded by machine-gun fire on the French-Belgian border. Pederson and her dad used to go together to the Cenotaph in Victoria on Remembrance Day until his death in 2005.
She came to Ottawa especially for Saturday’s ceremonies.
“We went to Vimy along with 26,000 others, so I wanted to compete the journey and be here today,” she told me.
I ask her what it meant to be here.
“Memories of those who have served faithfully, with the greatest cost of all. And the ones who came back and kept the story alive,” she said, fighting back tears.
“I’m married to a Yank. He was in the U.S. Navy. He told me that when the Americans stopped wearing their poppies, they basically stopped remembering. That really bothered him. Now as a Canadian, he’s so proud to wear the poppy. That symbol must never, ever be lost.”
In 2010, Canada’s last veteran of the First World War, John Babcock, died. And steadily, time trims the ranks of Second World War veterans too, fewer and frailer each Remembrance Day.
My own family’s direct connection to the Second World War ended this spring, with the death of my uncle Noel Shanks, a Lancaster bomber reargunner. My father and five uncles also served, among them John, the Stirling bomber pilot who went on to become a doctor and never talked about the war, and my Uncle Bill, an army medic who in the fighting on Juno Beach was both covered with the guts of his best friend and delivered the baby of a French civilian.
They and others are in my thoughts as I bow my head for the two minutes of silence.
“It brings back a lot of memories. Not too many good ones,” Henry Decker tells me. At 92, he still fits into the khaki battledress of the North Nova Scotia Highlanders.
Decker arrived in Europe on Jan. 1, 1945 and stayed on as part of the Allied army of occupation in Germany. When he returned to Nova Scotia, he resumed a successful career in the forest industry. But the nightmares continued long after the war was over.
“I had them for years,” he said. “War related. You’d wake up not knowing where you were.”
His doctor diagnosed Decker with a “nervous stomach” and convinced him to stop worrying. It worked.
Arsenault came home to Prince Edward Island and carried on for decades as a farmer on the west island.
My own uncles all returned home too, young men aged beyond their years and became dentists and librarians, engineers and airline executives. Having fought for freedom, they resumed their lives, guiding Canada through an unparalleled period of wealth and growth.
At Saturday’s ceremonies, I ask veteran William McLachlan, 94, what Remembrance Day means to him.
William McLachlan during the National Remembrance Day Ceremony at the National War Memorial in Ottawa on Saturday, November 11, 2017.
McLachlan, who served as a radar technician in Newfoundland and Europe, reaches into his pocket for a scrap of folded paper. It is a poem credited to Royal Canadian Air Force veteran Arnie Hanenburg that he reads aloud.
“You gave your lives in World War II
And even though I fought with you
I lived — was it my due?
You bought me time.
“Time to see my family grow
See my grandkids faces glow
Things that you will never know
You bought me time…”
“And now I’m over ninety-three
I’ve had a life both full and free
I thank you all eternally
You bought me time.”
bcrawford@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/getBAC
查看原文...
