Rest in Peace, Harry Patch and Henry Allingham

The last British Veteran (possibly the last veteran) of the Great War (WW 1) is now gone beyond. Before that, one of the remaining few to pass beyond was Henry Allingham, the last founding member of the RAF and another veteran of WW 1.

http://www.cbc.ca/photogallery/world/2443/

My Grandfather fought in the war and lived with the after effects for the rest of his life. It was a conflict that even we modern fork, inured to TV genocides and ethnic cleansings, and raised on televised real-world wars like the Persian Gulf War and the War in Afghanistan, would not have been able to endure like spectators. That war had men drowning in the mud, dying from disease, sleeping in trenches up to their midriffs in water with corpses and rats, dying from triangular bayonets, artillery shrapnel, mustard gas, the new horror of the anks, and the dreaded machine gun. The scale of casualties was vast and hard to believe compared to our losses in current wars.

So far, Canada has lost 127 men in Afghanistan. In less time than we've been in Afghanistan, we lost 67,000 killed in WW1. Think about it - that's over 527 times as many casualties! We think we've lost enough people in Afghanistan to justify us coming home... we've lost more Canadians than that in single days of fighting in WW 1.

http://europeanhistory.about.com/cs/worldwar1/a/blww1casualties.htm

WW 1 seems in may ways to have been a pointless war. It changed some political boundaries and killed a lot of people but it lacked the clear moral imperative of defeating Fascism or blocking Communist expansion of later conflicts. The only moral imperative was to not be dictated to by another nation and the whole war reminds me of a family feud at the highest level.

And yet, it claimed so many lives.

Take this brief opportunity to visit that link and contemplate the number of people all of the countries lost. The loss of human potential from the War... from individual battles like the abortive attack on Galipoli, commemorated in "Waltzing Matilda" (song). The horror of mustard gas, which is a gas which, when elements bind with the moisture (water) in your lungs forms hydrochloric acid in the lungs and throat. The horror of attacking through mud that can swallow you with a mis-step.

Think of all of that and consider yourself lucky to be living in the hear and now. We've had it good, by comparison. Whenever we get gloomy about our future and all the ills of the world today, just think about those numbers and the horrible meat-grinders of days gone by.

No, we've got it good. And we've got evey chance to make it better. Part of that is remembering how bad it was and how bad it could get again if we let it. And then striving not to let things go that way ever again.

Lest We Forget

Remembrance Day 1944
Some pictures
Canada Answers The Call (WWI)
Messages to the Home Front (WWII)
D-Day
Korean War

My Grandfather, from Dunfermline in Scotland, joined up underage in early 1916. He lied about his age. He had to do his bit, go with others from his hometown, and earn some money to support a family in which he was the eldest of seven children. They discovered he was underage and delayed his departure for Europe until he was 17. He was offered a posting in Britain as the stable master (he was very good with horses) by the Colonel of the training unit. They offered him an immediate promotion to Sergeant and indicated he would likely end a warrant officer. But he felt he had to go to Europe and do his part. So he refused (finishing the war a private).

He fought in some of the worst battles of Europe. The Somme. The Pursuit to the Rhine. A number of other more nameless battles. He fought in trenches and no-man's land. He watched friends die in the mud, from shellfire and shrapnel, and from the dreaded German machine guns. He went short of food and clean water and watched many childhood friends die around him. He served in the Occupation and returned home in 1920. He carried with him the rasp in the throat and lungs from having been Mustard gassed.

By 1920, all celebrations were over, all of the good jobs were taken. This was part of what led him to Canada in 1927. He was never given any warmdown or even a formal discharge - sent home on furlough and never called back. Eventually, he had to go find work and did.

He never forgot. The doctor in Almonte considered him good enough to manage most crises. When my father as a youth opened a large artery in his foot, they were having trouble staunching the bleeding. Grandad used ice cold water then stitched it up. When they phoned the Doctor, he said "If Tom sewed it up, I'm not going to be able to do any better."

That set of skills, hard won on the battlefield as he had to learn to treat shrapnel wounds and severed limbs among his peers in the 16th Highland Light Infantry, served him in good stead as superintendent of Rosemund's Woolen Mill in Almonte. In the Second World War, a troop train derailment in Almonte was a very bad accident scene. They called in everyone who had first aid skills and Grandfather was among the first. Here again his skills saw use on other poor young soldiers.

He didn't talk much about the war. He dealt with it privately. He never really got on with Germans after the war, understandably, but he was just remote not hostile. He'd seen too many friends die. I found out later that, out of 32 men from his neighborhood who joined, he was one of 3 that came back and at least one of those was never right afterwards, having been walking beside my grandfather when a shell dug up enough mud to cover them both, grandfater to the neck and this other fellow over his head. The oxygen starvation, before other comrades could dig his fellow soldier out, damaged the poor fellow permanently. My grandfather, although he could not move anything but his head, was okay. This was the random caprice of fate that determined who lived and who died.

In his final weeks at the age of 91, he had Sundowner's Syndrome where he relived the past at night (after a stroke). At that point, we got a picture of a traumatized man whose memories would stick with him - hiding from German patrols in no-man's land and trying to get his friend Jock to be quiet so as not to attract the patrols, even though Jock had lost his arm at the elbow from a shell fragment. Grandad had tied the tourniquet and was trying to get the two of them back to friendly lines.

My mother served as a Flight Lieutenant in the RCAF before the amalgamation of the services. A friend of mine, Robert, who has a newborn, and is an RCN member, is about to deploy to the HQ at Kandahar in Afghanistan for 7 months. My friend Gary is an RCAF intelligence officer and has deployed overseas on verification missions to validate training curriculum for Peacekeepers as we train them in Canada. He is now stationed in Ottawa. My friend Paul, an OPP officer, is a former Infantry Reserve officer. My best friend in the world, David, is an ex-Canadian Scottish infanteer.

I have friends who are former veterans of the US Airborne and Special Forces as well as the US Coast Guard (a military organization, unlike the Canadian one). I have other friends who have served with the Australian infantry, in the US Rangers, in the US Cavalry Scouts, and so on.

I have a lot to remember and a lot of people whose service I owe thanks for. I encourage everyone to think today about how our country has been defended over the years and still is being defended and how much our military personnel have given up to make us safe and to carry out the missions ordained by the politicians *we* elect.

Nunquam Cede. Ich Dien. Mottos of my old Regiment. A good summary of the Canadian soldier.