(Please read the next post "Remembrance Day" first)
Yes CJ, its story time with Gerry once more.
In 1939, my Dad, Big Al, doctored his birth certificate from 1924 to 1922, thus convincing the recruiting officer that he was turning 18. He almost got away with it; he was about to board a train to Halifax for overseas shipment when his grandmother ratted him out to the Black Watch Colonel; he was 15. Not wanting to lose a trained warm body, they reassigned him to a variety of time-killing assignments, the funniest of which was teaching 4th year McGill cartography students how to read maps. Really.
Big Al signed up with the Black Watch, but was reassigned out of the hospital in England to the Highland Light Infantry, the HLI. After the surrender of Germany, Big Al informed his mother, in his last letter to her, that they were sending the boys home. In the same letter, he dropped the bomb on her that he had volunteered to go to war in the Orient.
Fortunately, the troop carrier with all the volunteers for the Orient was approaching Halifax harbor the day the Japanese surrendered. The Harbormaster, rather intelligently, did not allow them to tie up that night. I’m not sure there would have been sufficient alcohol in Halifax, and it would have been embarrassing to have to berth all the returning warriors in the pokey.
At one of our HLI reunions, Big Al met one his mates, who I think was named Maybee. Apparently during the taking of Buron, on a charge to take the town, they were ordered to ignore the fallen, and keep advancing. Big Al found his friend Maybee shot in the leg. Big Al was the communications man and remembered that his radio had been damaged with either bullets or shrapnel, thus rendered useless.
My Dad, my hero, stopped, cut off a piece of wire, and made a tourniquet for his friend, all the while being berated by his Lieutenant, who was threatening to shoot him. Big Al had no idea if his friend survived and as he explained to me, had assumed that Maybee was just one more of the dead, so had not thought of him until that day.
Maybee recounted how he had been evacuated to Juno beach, patched up, and sent back across the channel. When he woke up a few days later in England, the doctors told him that whoever had attended to his leg in France, not only saved his leg from amputation, but had also saved his life. Maybee also had no idea what had happened to Big Al and had also assumed his friend had been one more of the dead.
That was Maybee’s first reunion. Unfortunately, it was also his last; he died later that year. It may seem sad, and for me at the time, it was. I was wrong. You see, 2 old friends were reunited; one of them was able to see his friend healthy and happy, and the other was able to finally thank his friend for his leg and his life.
This came to be a trend year after year. More and more of these guys were passing away. They ware all special to my daughters and me, and we too would notice familiar faces were missing each year. That was sad. My last reunion was 2002, after which we moved to Calgary. My Dad made it to 1 more before he died on December 5th, 2003. 2004 would have had his mates looking around and being reminded that Charlie (Big AL was known as Charlie to his contemporaries) was now one of those who would not be back.
I wonder if the reunions still happen. I wonder if old Jock, the chaplain still looks around and blesses his boys the way he did in Europe, and the way he did the first Saturday of every June for over 50 years in Galt. I wonder if Maybee ever shared his story with anyone else.
But mostly, I wonder if everyone involved with sending our forces into harms way really knows stories like these, and relationships like these. I mean really know them. I’m not implying that they should be making emotional decisions; I just wish they would consider the emotions and experiences “Our Boys” go through. Every June for a decade, I saw their emotions. It affected me immensely, and I think those making decisions about our Forces should experience the same.
I will always remember old Jock, Maybee, and all the others whose names I have forgotten, but mostly, I will remember Private Robert Emmett Charles Bradley, self-proclaimed Acting Lance Corporal without-pay, as being at home among these honorable, ordinary men who did extraordinary things when called upon.
Please think about “Our Boys” during the moment of silence on every November 11, at the very least.
Je me souviens.
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Thank you again. I am always amazed by the actions of ordinary people who find themselves in extraordinary circumstances. I thought I'd reciprocate by sharing a story about my father and how his life was also saved by a soldier.
ReplyDeleteAs mentioned in my previous comment, my father was in the Black Watch. He landed in France in July of 1944, fought for three weeks, and was captured in August. He fought in one small battle, then in a very large and disasterous one at Verrieres Ridge, then in another smaller battle. After that fight was over, he found himself in a ditch, surrounded by the wounded and the dead. Panzer tanks rolled down the road, and a Nazi commander walked in front of them, calling for the living to surrender. My father decided to hide in a nearby culvert, and pulled a dead body over himself. One by one the survivors stood up, and after a few minutes, they were sprayed with machine gun fire. My father was hit in the leg, but he stayed in hiding, and the tanks rolled away.
A short time later a company of regular German soldiers came down the road. They began searching the bodies in the ditches. When they got to my father, he tried to play dead, but someone poked him with a bayonet, so he sat up. Just as he was trying to get to his feet, the Nazi commander came back. Seeing my father still alive, he hurried over and began arguing with the soldier. My father didn't speak German, but he knew what was going on. The commander was insisting that my father was HIS prisoner, and the soldier claimed my father belonged to him. They argued for quite some time, each reaching out to grab his uniform, pulling him back and forth between them. Eventually the commander gave up, made a gesture of dismissal - you take him - and stormed away. The soldier looked at my father, shook his head, and motioned at him to get out of the ditch. When he saw he couldn't get up because of the wound in his leg, he handed over his rifle. My father used it as a crutch, climbed out, and handed it back to him. He surrendered, one of only a handful of men who got to keep his life that day, saved by the actions of another ordinary man, a German.
My father spent the rest of the war as a POW. He was released May 1, l945.
Donna