Re: Dear Metoos
- From: Joe English <joe2aenglish@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 30 Mar 2008 13:38:45 -0500
JOF wrote:
On Mar 30, 4:57 am, "janus...@xxxxxxxxxxx" <janus...@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
On 29 Mar, 21:58, JOF <jofran...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Mar 29, 4:32 pm, "Scott" <pugetsounddi...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:ROTFL. Which unit was he with?"Douglas W. "Popeye" Frederick" <Pop...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote inYeah. If my Dad was still alive you could tell him all about that.
messagenews:13ut4g5hfd77g87@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Well, we love you anyway.He is unaware of the concept that people would volunteer, fight, kill and
Kinda.
die for his freedom too.
Then he'd fill you in on what it was like for a Canuck soldier in
Europe in the 40's. Of course Dad always suffered fools badly, so he
might just laugh at you.
He enlisted with the Essex Scottish, Perth Regiment, but I'm not sure
how that worked when he was sent overseas. In all honesty he wasn't
over there all that long. He was an infantry instructor at Ipperwash
for a while, then he got promoted and sent to England, something to do
with Intelligence, whatever that means. He said the only fun he had at
Ipperwash was when he got sent over to the grenade range to use his
rifle to try to light off duds so they didn't have to send in live
bodies. I think he was one of those folks who didn't see much glory in
war. It was just a necessity. He brought back a few pictures but no
stories. I was born while he was still over there, right at the end of
the war.
JOF - he wasn't over there longer than 9 months before you were born was?
I am just kidding - I mean no disrespect to you, your father, and especially not your mother :-)
.
His three brothers were over there too in various places with infantry
jobs. One of them got wounded but I forget which. That was another
thing that wasn't talked about much. Mom's three brothers went too.
The youngest was a tail gunner in the bombers. He lied about his age
to get in. Another crewed on flying boats doing sea rescues. He got
decorated for some kind of heroic acts related to that. He's the one
who became a police chief later. The third couldn't do much because of
his eyesight so he wangled a posting as a cook on the Navy ships
running the fighting guys across the ocean. With the exception of
Mom's oldest brother I'm not sure any of them did anything
extraordinarily heroic, just whatever they could. None of them talked
much about their war years. It seemed like it was just something
everybody did and were glad when it was over.
I was born in a small southwestern Ontario town and it seemed like
most of the fellows of the right age had enlisted when the time came,
but about the only war stories I heard locally as a kid were from one
old fellow who'd been gassed in WW I. He told us a few trench fighting
stories when we were out in the boat fishing. The gas had pretty much
ruined his lungs but he still managed to live to be pretty durned old.
Oh, and he'd lost an arm over there as well. He didn't seem to find
much heroic about any of it, either.
There was one funny Canadian soldier WW II story I heard from a fellow
I met in the 60's. He'd been fighting in Italy but I'm not sure what
army he was with. He was given a medal for heroism. Apparently he was
a machine gunner and with his unit, however many that included,
stopped a German column from crossing some bridge at a crucial time.
Seems he and the others had found a supply of Italian wine and were
pissed as pirates for the whole show. He thought it was pretty funny
that they got medals for something he can't even remember doing.
Canucks for whatever reason have never seemed interested in glorifying
the war experience. Perhaps it was just that they didn't perform as
many heroic deeds, or perhaps it was something else. I was surprised
in fact at the amount of attention that the Juno Beach memorial got a
few years ago. The Dutch have always shown a particular fondness for
Canucks and their contribution during the war.
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/1054905294339_26?s_name=&no_ads=
I did a quick search "Essex Scottish Perth Regiment" and found this
site with some pics at the bottom.
http://wwii.ca/page52.html
I'd always assumed the Perth Regiment part came from the fact that our
home was in Perth County but apparently it was something bigger than
that. Again, Dad and the others didn't spend a lot of time telling war
stories when they got home so what little I know I've had to gather on
my own.
One good thing to come out of WW II, my wife's parents met at a
Canadian army base and were married while both were still enlisted.
Their wedding pics show them both in unirform. Were it not for the war
they'd have never met, and my wife wouldn't have been around for me to
marry later.
Actually one other good thing - I live in one of the more populous
areas of Canada so naturally a high percentage of the Dutch war brides
ended up in this area. They attracted a number of friends and
relatives to emigrate here later and many of those Dutch immigrants,
through hard work and good business acumen, became very successful
farmers. They've been a strong influence on the farming success of our
part of Ontario. I guess we have the war to thank for that too.
JF
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