Thoughts on Becoming a "War Hero..."

He was only a child when he decided
to go. He had slipped the papers beneath
near-sighted grand-ma's hand and urged
her to sign telling her it was for permission
to go to a class performance.

It was a permission slip but of a different kind...
It allowed him to go away for more than five years
and to come back an old man of nineteen with
stories that no child should ever know about.

Dad had always been headstrong and was very much
like his own dad, my grand-father, who had left a very
comfortable life in London to embark upon the grand adventure
pitting him against the elements at Hudson Bay when
Canada had yet to have its Northern frontier settled.

So, it was not unexpected that he would lead the pack...
When the First World War broke out, he was not alone in
feeling that here was an opportunity to win for Canada and
come home a hero about whom speeches were made...

In his naivete, he rushed out to join the Black Watch, the famous Canadian
unit of the Scottish regiment...

No one heard from dad in a very long time...
And when they'd realized where he'd gone, they had petitioned the
Prime Minister but it was already too late.
He was already aboard a troop ship and well on his way to the fighting,
which if that was what he was after, he got to see often and up close.

Dad was wounded something like a half dozen times over five years
and in one instance almost lost his life and was shipped from the
battle front back to England where he met Princess Mary who had
invited the young man to have tea with her at the palace.

But before long, he had recuperated and was back at the front living in
the hellish trenches of the front lines... Anyone who has read of
life in the trenches could appreciate what any young man would have
gone through. He had seen all of his closest friends killed or maimed
by exploding shells or a sniper's bullet.

When he had gone in, he was full of pluck expecting to come back in six months.
He had joined in 1914 and did not come back til 1919. He came back a
different young man, serious and wisened by living a life nobody should
know. He came back to find his father dead, a man once thought to be immortal
succumbed to mortal illness. His mother and all three of his sisters had moved,
two to New York City.

It was not easy to adjust to Civilian living. He had heard about the beginning of
the Canadian AirForce and joined spending nearly a year in training and flying before
he and his co-pilot crashed into a lake where his copilot died and he sustained wounds
that required a year's hospital stay.

Upon leaving the service, still unsettled, he headed west and spent several years in the
majestic Canadian west as a cowboy... Finally, the loneliness of being out in the western plains
must have torn at him enough for him to want to rejoin what remained of his family.
And he went home to his Canadian home, which was still in the family name, packed his bags and headed to a new adventure in New York City...

Long after I was born, dad seldom talked of the War to End All Wars except to allude to me that War was the worst kind of hell on earth... He infrequently would mention one of his friends
who died in the trenches or during an attack on the enemy lines. He tried to find something
in those dark days that was redeeming. Mostly, it was his inner patriotism, an unwillingness to allow the Kaiser to have his way with the rest of the world that kept him and many of his 'mates' committed to the course. And, of course, in the end, those who embraced democracy won!...

Occasionally, I would peak into his boxes of medals; or he would get an invitation from the King when he visited to New York to attend his gathering in memory of what he and others had done to save the world from totalitarianism. I think of this a lot these days. And wish that some of my friends knew more about the foundation of not only Canada but this great country and how much blood has been spilt to protect the words that guarantee our freedoms!....
I wish, too, that more time were spent on learning about the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence. I wish our children and grand-children knew more about the sacrifices our founding fathers made to assure our liberties and what they stood for...

Perhaps some day, we will learn to place more value on these living documents and what they stand for. And to discover that they are worth standing up for whether it's against an enemy from abroad or our government should it seek to abrogate the lessons of democracy...

Les Aaron
The Armchair Curmudgeon...