Editor’s Note: Tom Douglas, a former Sault journalist and a best-selling military author, offers a respectful but lighter look at what Remembrance Day means to him:
November 11 was a day originally set aside to commemorate the end of World War One – naively referred to at the time as “the war to end all wars”. It didn’t take long – just over two decades in fact – for that wishful thinking to be dashed by a mad Austrian corporal fanatically embittered at the outcome of that not-so-great war. Mankind was to learn the hard way that tyranny knows no time limit.
And thus, Remembrance Day now provides an opportunity for us to honour all those who fought – and, in far too many cases, died – on land, at sea and in the air in both global conflicts as well as in Korea, Afghanistan, and other trouble spots in far away places with strange-sounding names.
As the residents of Sault Ste. Marie prepare to pay homage to such brave souls as WW1’s William Merrifield, VC MM and WW2’s Borden Gray GC, the sacrifices of these heroes and so many others from “up and down the line” will be recalled with both sadness and gratitude.
As Canada’s John McCrae wrote in his immortal poem In Flanders Fields, those who paid the supreme sacrifice felt dawn, saw sunset glow, loved and were loved. In my experience, after decades of talking to veterans of all stripes and shoulder flashes, they also had a sense of humour that saw them through their darkest hours.
The tales heard over the years sitting in Legion Halls at the conclusion of Remembrance Day ceremonies from one end of Canada to the other are rarely the horror-filled recollections of the mindless slaughter of war. Rather, the “old sweats” – as many refer to themselves – regale their comrades – or perhaps bore them for the nth time – with funny stories told on themselves, on their ever-klutzy superior officers, or on their buddies. Here are just a few it has been my pleasure to pick up while sitting at draft-beer-covered tables at the Soo’s Legion Branch 25…
Puffs of dust all around him
Sgt. Mel Douglas couldn’t understand why, on a bright sunny day in Belgium, there were puffs of dust rising all around him as though raindrops were falling from the heavens. He had been sent down a dirt road to warn another artillery battery with a defunct radio that they were shelling a Nazi-occupied house with Canadian wounded in the basement. It was only when he reached his destination that an ashen-faced artilleryman pointed to a German machinegun emplacement on the upper floor of the targeted house that had been trying to send the patriarch of our family to that Great Bellevue Park In The Sky.
Self-declared army misfit
Vern Rowsell was a prickly burr under his commanding officer’s saddle. A self-declared army misfit, he would toe the military line long enough to be promoted to corporal before inevitably pulling some stunt that would get him busted back to private. He also had a doting mother back home who would send him encouraging telegrams. One of those arrived at headquarters at the end of WW2 and his long-suffering superior officer saw his chance to get even. At morning parade, the CO announced to the assembled troops that he had an important telegram to read – and called Private Rowsell to present himself front and centre. With great delight, the officer read the message Vern’s mom had sent, praising him as though he had won the war single-handedly: “Congratulations, son, on a job well done!” There were more than a few hoots and catcalls as Vern slunk back to his place in the formation.
'We ran like hell'
Rowsell told another story where he and his buddies were sleeping upstairs in an abandoned house when they heard bootfalls in a room below them. Peering through a crack in the flooring, Vern felt the hair on his neck rise as he spotted several well-armed German soldiers who had taken shelter in the building. When a breathless young lady at the Legion table asked Vern what happened next, he replied: “I grabbed my sten gun and mowed them all down!” Amid the oohs and aahs at the table, Vern added: “Now do you want the truth? We ran like hell!”
Left his boots behind
Ed Clinton, an RCAF tail gunner, was ordered to bail out of his crippled bomber during a raid over enemy territory – and found himself hanging upside-down outside the rapidly-descending aircraft when his flight boots caught on some jutting metal. Ed managed to free himself by leaving his boots behind and safely parachuted to earth. With the worst possible luck, he landed near a German Army base but since he was wearing a flight suit that wasn’t dissimilar to those worn by Nazi airmen, he decided to tough it out by saluting the sentry at the gate and carrying on regardless. The sentry returned the salute, then did a double take when he realized Ed was marching by in his sock feet. A German POW camp was Ed’s home away from home for the duration.
'Who's sorry now?'
The late Soo architect Perry Short was an RAF glider pilot in training for a planned sea and air invasion of Japan as WW2 in the Pacific still raged after hostilities had ended in Europe. Knowing of the fierce loyalty to their emperor that would have the Japanese fighting the invaders to the bitter end, Perry kept asking his superiors how they planned to get him and his fellow glider pilots safely back home. An uneasy feeling at their cavalier suggestion that he not worry about that aspect of the raid had visions dancing through his head of a Japanese farmer playing “Who’s Sorry Now” on his headgear with an ancient samurai sword. Tragically for the Japanese but fortunately for Perry, the Americans dropped the A-bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, making his question about his safe return superfluous.
'Change the world as we know it'
While Perry’s fate was in the balance, his future wife Janet was a young girl back in England listening to a BBC broadcast in the den at the Churchill mansion, Chartwell. Janet’s late father had been the vicar at the nearby church Winston, Clementine and their children attended. The Churchills had taken a shine to Janet and she was a frequent visitor at their residence. On this occasion, the evening of August 5, 1945, while Perry was having nightmares about landing in the outskirts of Tokyo, the American bomber Enola Gay was winging its way to Japan to drop a five-ton atom bomb nicknamed “Fat Boy” over the densely populated city of Hiroshima. Janet, of course, had no idea what was in the offing, but Winston was sitting nearby at his desk, his ubiquitous snifter of Cognac and his fat cigar getting regular workouts. Winnie, as the free world referred to the man holding their fate in his hands, looked at Janet with his famous scowl and said: “Young lady, you won’t know what I’m talking about but I have to tell someone. We are about to unleash on humanity something that will change the world as we know it forever!” And the rest, as they say, is history…