Showing posts with label remembrance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label remembrance. Show all posts

Tuesday, November 11, 2025

Lest We Forget

Its been 107 years since my grandfathers came back from the war to end all wars, and 80 years since my father and several uncles came back from the next big war while one is interned in Normandy.    

Malcom Macfarlane

I doubt if there'll be an end to war in my life time and I rather think HG Wells was right that we should put the politicians and generals in a large room with lots of toy soldiers to fight the wars, 

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

There Are Days ....

 ....when I suspect that I am creeping towards old age, forgetting things and being tardy (mind you, I  have been forgetful and tardy since I was 5 yrs old, so its hard to tell).  Anyway, I usually post a Remembrance Day blog post but this year I only posted on FB. 

I did watch the ceremony broadcast from Ottawa, standing to attention when the last post was sounded as usual. To my surprise though, I found myself think not of previous generations, but of my own friends who have seen active duty in the years after my 9 years were up, and then remembering 50 years ago when several times I was one of the red coated officer cadets, marching through the streets to do honour those who had risked their lives and paid the price, whether it was their life, a limb, or less visible suffering.   

Thank you to CTV for this 2024 photo. The redcoats with pillbox caps will be from 1 of the 2 military colleges (we used to alternate).

Lest we forget.

Friday, August 30, 2024

Absent Friends

Yes, that's Sunday's toast and it's only Friday but a friend, a wargaming and discoursing about history, miniature wargaming, life and various other topics, friend, David Wilson, has recently passed away. 

It was in the early 80's when I had just resigned my commission and had been talked into trying my hand as a shopkeeper at a new wargaming, D&D, miniatures, etc. store which I named The Tin Soldier, (As it turns out, my shopkeeper ancestors hadn't passed the right DNA to me and I was only saved by getting a temp. job that led to a job that led me to  find various unsuspected talents and a career). 

Anyway, this tall, thin, smart, mustachioed, educated, and slightly hippy-ish guy came in to look at the 15mm Napoleonics rack and we got chatting. Before long I had him joining into games as well as spending a lot of time talking over coffee or beer. Before the decade was over he decided to leave town to up his university degrees to Doctor of...various things. For a while he settled in Fredericton and, now and then, when I was there for work or visiting family, I occasionally dropped in for a chat if I had a chance.  Then I retired early, had my heart attack, Covid hit, and my trips to visit family became fewer and shorter and David and I lost contact.  

So it came as a shock recently to get the news that he had passed away, even though he was almost a decade older than me. I felt the need to make some remembrance of him, so I mounted one of my original figures with a few words in memory of our friendship and passed it to his partner. 




May David's spirit find someone to discourse with wherever it goes. 





Saturday, September 23, 2023

Long Ago And Far Away

I had an email recently from old long time friend Simon MacDowell (author and wargamer, amongst other things: see Legio Wargames website) which included a photo he'd taken during a recent visit to the Fort St. Jean museum at R.M.C St. Jean ( C.M.R or College Militaire Royal de St. Jean as it was known when we were there). 

Soldiers of the Carignan-Salieres building the first fort at St. Jean in 1666.
(diorama built in 1973)

Now there is nothing really extraordinary about the diorama except that I made it in 1973! The figures are converted Airfix (ahhh good old low heat soldering iron, paper, plastecene and glue!) I find it hard to believe that it survived and is still on display.

That was when I was a '1st Year' cadet (meaning it was my 2nd year having been a 'Prep' the year before) and a member of the museum club which was working to establish a museum. Well, made it with some help from then new recruit Simon which led to wargames and 5 decades of friendship (so far, not done yet). 

The museum was eventually opened and accredited, and I was the 3rd Cadet Curator. In the latter part of the 20thC, sometime around when the Berlin Wall came down and history and wars "ended", the Canadian Forces shut down two of the three military colleges and the St. Jean campus was used for some senior officer courses and I think various civilian courses and possibly for sports team training, Anyway, once it was discovered that there were going to be more wars after all, the St. Jean campus was reinstated as a military college  that was not only bilingual, but also bisexual, well, no, that's the wrong term, coed is better, but call it what you will, looking back at 5 years in my teens and early 20's when the only females were a handful of antique waitresses in the mess and a couple of secretaries and a librarian.....sighhh....  

But I digress,  the museum had been preserved and when the college was reopened the museum was as well, in a larger setting with a much bigger budget judging by the pictures! I'm hoping to get there in person some day and see what they've done with the place where I grew from kid to adult, and see what they've made of the little museum that a small group of cadets put together half a century ago.

Friday, November 11, 2022

Battle of Otterlo, April 1945 and why I have a commendation signed by Monty on my wall.


At last, thanks to Menno J. de Vries who posted the attached video about the Battle of Otterlo, 16-17 April 1945 on Youtube, I have found something about the action which led to Dad being issued a certificate signed by Montgomery.




Dad only talked to me about that night once, when I was in uniform and in my 20's. I forget where the discussion started, but it wandered its way here and there, as such chats often do, but ended up with some largely humerous stories from Sicily and Italy and then about the only mention I can remember hearing of his time in NW Europe. That is not to say that he was much given to talking about the war, a few memories of the pubs in England (he was 19 when he went overseas) and having to talk a bit of gaelic with some of his Scottish aunts. What stories he did have from active service from Sicily and Italy were generally humerous. Indeed, this story started with a humerous annecdote. He was a Corporal in charge of a signal attachment assigned to an HQ unit and they were having a frustrating time trying to repair a telephone line at night, only to have it cut again immediately each time they fixed it. When the battle was over the next day, they found that they had been yards away from a German MG post and these had probably not wanted to give away their position, and were probably enjoying listening to the 'tommies' cussing and swearing as they went back and forth trying to get the line working!

Anyway, eventually they headed back to town and bedded down in the basement of a house, until the German attack rolled in. In the morning, when the Canadian tanks rolled in, Dad and his sidekick were still defending their basement. He did then get serious and talked about the horrible, sickening stench of the burnt bodies etc, human and animal, after the Wasp flamethrowers rolled through.

Lest we forget.


Thank you Menno J. de Vries for posting the following video about the Battle of Otterlo.

_____________




Tuesday, August 30, 2022

Oh That It Should Come To This!

Old T-shirts can be guardians of some great memories but none the less, even if they are beloved working shirts, one day they reach the end of their time, as do we all.  That doesn't mean they are tossed in some rubbish bin then. Old vets can still be useful, if only as a cleaning rag, and the memories of the good times live on! 

Here is the short version of the epic journey that brought us together.

One last moment together before the transformation began.

The chosen theme for the 2001 HMGS Cold Wars convention was the American Rebellion (or Revolution or War of Independence if you prefer), broken down to the early years at Cold Wars, the Middle years at Historicon and the later years at Fall In!.  Since my duties at home and at work made Cold Wars the easiest one for me to get time off, that's the one I usually attended so early years it was. Luckily, that coincided with the most relevent part of the AR for me, Mongomery's attack on Quebec. 

Now it was only fairly recently that I had started the Little Wars Yahoo Group and 54mm had become my main scale, I decided to do a game based on the 1775 New Year's Eve assault. With a number of friends providing figures in addition to my own, I focused on coming up with toy soldier versions of the walls and houses and barricades etc. (Ever wonder why I use so many Christmas village houses on my table, esp before I painted over the snow?) Everything was set, two friends from Halifax were going to travel down with me.

So much for plans. As the departure date approached, reports of an impending mega-snowstorm in New England  began to threaten disaster. On the evening before we were due to leave, I decided to launch a preemptive drive. My friend Tom was good to go with an hour's notice but our 3rd passenger, we'll just call him X, didn't have a cell phone, or a land line, and wasn't home anyway, so we cruised about the streets till we spotted him, dragged him into the car, drove him to his rooms and gave home 30 minutes to shower, pack and join us. I was driving a little Chevy Sprint, a bit crowded for more than two even without the city of Quebec, including the cliffs that separate the Lower town from the Upper town. (btw...if you ever wonder how Wolfe got his army inc a couple of canons up a goat trail at l'Anse Aux Foulons, not to mention why the French would bring boatloads of supplies there when the main road was open, French maps and orders of the time show that there was already a wagon road there, where the road is today. The first wave just missed the proper landing spot. Serendipity.) This meant more boxes than usual and as a result, whoever's turn it was in the back seat, had to sit with a box full of terrain on his lap!  (Its only a 24 hour drive in all....

Hitting the road at maybe 8pm, we reached my forewarned parents, then living in a mobile next door to my brother in New Brunswick, and crashed from about 2 am until 6 am, then rose and carried on as the snow started to come down. By the time we neared Portland, the I95 was hubcap deep and we just barely managed to pull in to a motel. By morning, the snow had stopped, the road ahead was open and the road behind us was closed for two days. Phew! Carpe diem! 

By early afternoon we were in tshirts and visiting the  The Toy Soldier museum in Pennsylvania  (btw, if you ever make the chance and book an appointment, its worth a long drive to go visit for an hour or two or....). A few hours later we were booking in to the Lancaster host and a great convention followed.

ALLLLLRight, you sluggarts! Enough nostalgia. Get to work! There's a chain saw to clean.

As I recall the game was a good one with a close result and some memorable incidents but after more than a decade of life, games, and memories, the details are gone. Its a pity that it was in the very early days of digital cameras and cellphones and a VERRY busy convention with other games to run or play and I don't have even one picture of that Cold Wars or the game that was at the core of this story. 

Still, the memories live on in the shirt, and in me. 



Saturday, February 26, 2022

Not All Wars Are Games

The news of Russia's invasion of the Ukraine this week has  rather distracted me from playing with toy soldiers as real wars often do. Partly it has been the time spent listening to reporters and analysts, partly thinking of the tragedy for those involved, partly concern about the future, and partly the usual angst about making a game out of violence and human and animal suffering. 

However, there are also memories of being a young kid in the early 60's, during the height of the Cold War. I remember crouching under my desk at school during air raid drills (I'm not sure just how much protection cowering under a little wooden desk is against a nuclear explosion, I suppose it depends on how far you are from the epicentre.), as well as a bad stretch when I was a kid when  the sound of a passenger jet flying overhead was enough to have me heading for the basement or at least holding my breath and staring at the sky in case it was a Russian bomber. (Yes bombers, those were the days when ICBM's were in their infancy.

By the time I was 17 and in uniform, the Soviets were still "the enemy",  and the anonymous 'Orange' enemy always seemed to use their equipment, but the Canada vs USSR hockey tournament was on  and even the wet behind the ears 'Prep's were allowed in to watch the last, knuckle biting, game with its triumphant squeak of victory for us. Nine years later, when my initial term of service was up, with war forever banished and the dawning realization that in real life, the military  and I were not really  a good match,  I declined to extend my service. Of course, I had barely opened my short lived game shop when Argentina occupied the Falklands. Apparently not all wars were banished after all.    

Oh. well, I have talked with friends who have served in combat since those days and I've learned a lot about my strengths and weaknesses since I was in my 20's. On the whole, I'm even more convinced that I wouldn't have ever been much good at it in real life. Its a good thing for my mental health that I have found a number of things that I  am good at, and that many a veteran who has seen real combat still plays historical wargames, including that intrepid grouch of French Resistance fighters in Paris during the Nazi occupation  who played wargames with 30mm flats when not making raids.    


We now return you to your regularly scheduled service:


WOW! What a roll!


Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Another Empty Chair

A few days ago I received the sad news that a friend of some 25 years has passed away.
John Daniel at Cold Wars early this century, playing in my 54mm 1812 game using my newly written Morschauser inspired rules (eventually Hearts of Tin), wearing his habitual smile and having painted up a unit to help swell my ranks, since history, helping people and smiling were some of the many things that came naturally to him.

I haven't seen John in a few years since I haven't been farther south than Maine and his health has prevented him from travelling as widely as he used to, but we have always stayed in touch. He is one of only two of my American  wagaming friends who have had me for a guest at their home, and one of only three who I have had the pleasure of having  hosted for game at my home in Nova Scotia. 

John was an avid re-enactor, (iir  he's somewhere in the mass of Union soldiers at the assault on Fort Wagner in 'Glory' as well as others,) and he often offered to kit me out if I came to visit during the reenacting season. I would have loved to have taken him up on that offer but time, distance and affairs at home and work always got in my way.

Good bye old friend, we were blessed by your presence here and I am sure your spirit somewhere, is marching on. 


Thursday, September 30, 2021

Truth and Reconciliation

We have a new National Holiday in Canada, Truth and Reconciliation Day, but like Remembrance Day, its not a party day but a day for reflection.


Now, I was born in Montreal, as were my parents, but all of my grandparents were born across the ocean. Growing up, most of my friends were the same, except one whose ancestors were United Empire Loyalists who had come north after failing to suppress the rebellion in the American colonies. When I got to college though, I met friends whose families had come to Quebec nearly 500 years earlier. 

I was of course aware of the original inhabitants but had never actually met one until my navy days in the 70's on the West Coast, at a little place called Gibson's Landing.   That meeting started as a confrontation with some rather angry and possibly under the influence, young men who were looking for revenge for some friends who had been beaten up a week ago. Once we'd explained that it hadn't been us and shared a few beers with them while chatting, they invited a couple of us to come along to a public celebration they were having and it was a great evening.  

Now I live on the East Coast where first contact came over a thousand years ago with Viking settlements and trading coasts followed later by Basque fishing stations for salting cod and one of the the oldest permanent European settlements (Port Royal on the Bay of Fundy 1605) but it was only when I relocated to the shores of the Minas Basin that I started to meet some Mi'kmaq as individuals and members of my community. Even more surprising was when it came to light that the Mi'kmaq and Abenaki had never fully ceded Nova Scotia to the crown but had signed a treaty of friendship in 1752 in which they essentially agreed to share the land while maintaining their rights to hunt and fish and trade. 

However, that's distant history. The main trigger for this day of reconciliation came late in the 19thC when our Federal Government passed a law requiring all Indian children to attend residential schools, paid for by the Federal government but run by various Christian churches. The intention appears to have been a desire to bring the first nations people more closely into Canadian society but whatever the intention was, the result was essentially an exercise in cultural genocide which also led to the deaths of  thousands of children from disease aided by inadequate diets and abuse not to mention many long lasting mental and emotional problems. The stories that have started coming out from some of the survivors of the improved 20th C schools are at times horrific.     

Sometime we forget how good some of us have it, or what harm people with good intentions can do.   


Friday, June 4, 2021

Another Fallen Hero

 Word has spread quickly about the death of Duncan MacFarlane, founder and one-time editor of Miniature Wargames and Wargames Illustrated, both magazines with the pull to appear in magazine stalls and hobby shops even in obscure corners of the Commonwealth.

In those days before the internet, such magazines, including the Courier over here, were vital sources of inspiration,  information and advertising for those of us in the boonies with little or no access to relevant shops and shows/conventions, slogging it out with a handful of comrades in arms.

I didn't make the front cover but didn't care.


I can't pass on any anecdotes, the only time I met him was when I found myself scanning the same publications as him at a stall at Historicon, read his nametag and exchanged a few words. But he stands high in my regard, not only for his magazines  but because he was the first editor to publish an article by me. (#23) 

The article included a set of rules so he probably has a lot to answer for to other gamers, but if it wasn't for Duncan and then Dick Bryant, this blog probably wouldn't exist.

Thank you Duncan, may you rest in peace.

Tuesday, November 10, 2020

Lest We Forget

When I was young, veterans of WW1 were not uncommon and WWII vets were everywhere. Now there are very few left but they all remain in our memory. 

So, for my Dad who soldiered on from Ortona to Holland, one of Lady Astor's DDay Dodgers:





However, we should also remember  that we now have a fresh wave of  more recent, 21st Century, veterans who have also answered their country's call and put their lives on the line and we have grieving families. They should also be remembered by us.

Monday, April 20, 2020

Maintiens le Droit

Maintiens le Droit is the motto of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

This has not been a day for playing games but a day of sorrow, and a day to honour Constable Heidi Stevenson, a veteran RCMP officer as well as a loved wife and mother of two with a reputation for being the best kind of friend, neighbour, and citizen when off duty.

Yesterday, she gave her life in the performance of her duty to uphold the law and protect the innocent. May she be long remembered with honour.
Constable Heidi Stevenson

It is also a day to mourn the loss of seventeen twenty two fellow Nova Scotians killed in a senseless rampage by one who should be erased from the pages of history.

Sunday, November 10, 2019

Lest We Forget

Take a least a minute this November 11 to remember those who have put and those who are still putting their lives at risk to keep us free and safe. 
http://windsorns.ca/in-remembrance-2017-hants-county-war-memorial/


Tuesday, November 5, 2019

Old Toy Soldier 'Nut's Never Die

If any one person could take credit for converting me from being a "serious" historical wargamer to playing simple, fun wargames with shiny toy soldiers, that person would be the late Stuart Asquith.

Stuart first came to my attention with his magazines Practical Wargamer and Regiment as well as his Toy Soldier Box column in Military Modelling which eventually pushed me over the edge into ordering enough recast Britains charging highlanders from Soldierpac to form a regiment for MacDuff. Of course I painted them in matte detailed fashion but it was a big step towards today's glossy toy regiments.

I don't remember now what motivated me to  write to  him, but I think it was on the demise of Practical Wargaming  to express how much I had enjoyed and would miss it and possibly about the positive effect it had had on my attitude towards wargaming.  (It was 20 years ago so details are fuzzy!) At any rate he wrote back after viewing my old website and we periodically exchanged notes and pictures then emails over the years that followed. When he started slimming his own collection he offered me his Britain's Light Brigade at a price I couldn't refuse and they still form the bulk of my  cavalry, for both sides!

I can't claim to be a close personal friend but I really enjoyed our periodic correspondence as well as his writing and was rather pleased when he invited me to contribute pictures of some of my War of 1812 40's for his first book on the subject and will miss hearing from him.

Stuart had a huge, positive influence on our hobby and that can continue through his books but it is a sad loss for the hobby as well as for his family and friends. 



For more about Stuart see Bob's eulogy at http://wargamingmiscellany.blogspot.com/2019/11/stuart-asquith-rip.html

Saturday, November 10, 2018

Lest We Forget

This November 11th is the 100th Anniversary of the guns falling silent in France at the end  of the "Great War".

From the Canadian Encyclopedia:

"Canada is traditionally assigned the tragic distinction of losing the last casualty among British Commonwealth forces during the First World War. Private George Price was hit in the chest from a sniper shot in the town of Ville-sur-Haine, near Mons. He died at 10:58 a.m., two minutes before the armistice went into effect, officially ending the ​First World War ."

National War Memorial, Ottawa - Confederation Square 
(courtesy Parks Canada/photo by B. Morin).

(I have twice had the privilege  of  going on parade at the Remembrance Day ceremonies in Ottawa. This year Kathy and I will be attending the local ceremony in Windsor.)
.


Tuesday, March 20, 2018

A Noteworthy Centennial

Happy 100th Birthday to the late Don Featherstone! (The link will take you to the wiki page where you can learn more about Don if he is unfamiliar to you.)

(Thank you Man of Tin! for the notice and tribute on your blog!  which alerted me to the occasion.)

A sight to inspire a lifetime of figure conversions!
It was at some point during the winter of 1970/71 that I spotted a copy of Battles With Model Soldiers on the shelf at W. Smith's in Montreal and was lost.... or perhaps was found.

Although he provided the rules for my first wargames, by 1973 I'd been nabbed by WRG and was off looking for a different sort of wargame for a few decades. However, by then, he had already gotten me hooked on two vital aspects of our hobby and in life really.

The first was to build on the foundation laid by Henry Harris and to confirm me as a lifelong converter of toy/model soldiers. How long did I spend identifying just what was done to which Airfix figures in the photo above and trying to figure out just how it was done?

One of the shots of mysterious, magical, metal figures that one couldn't buy in shops where I lived! 

The second is reflected in the header to this blog. He helped instill in me an appreciation for the value of doing my own research, making up my own mind and modifying rules to suit or even writing my own rules. The real importance of this though was that Doc Ruddy, my mentor at college, built on that foundation as well as my Dad's example to lead me to take the same attitude to life in general. Blessings on all three men!

I never really understood why he had so many pictures of unpainted Airfix figures in the book when he obviously had so many other painted figures, but I DID understand that one day I would pit British in khaki shorts backed by an armoured car against North West Frontier tribesmen.
This just may be the year!


But in particular, on this 100th anniversary of the birth of Don Featherstone, thank you Don for the inspiration that led to hours and years of pleasure and learning and friendships .




Monday, March 5, 2018

Souvenirs and Assumptions

One of my IT Bosses used to love writing ASSUME on the whiteboard then slashing it thus: ASS/U/ME, while reciting  "Assume makes an ASS of U and ME" as a way of reminding us never to make assumptions when planning and implementing projects.

Today I was clearing a work space as yet another subconscious tactic to avoid starting in on year end books and tax returns when I came across my little stash of old maps. Two were essentially souvenir maps handed out to the 5th Canadian Armoured Division HQ (Dad's outfit) of their journey up the Italian Boot and through Holland. The third was an old WWI tactical map.

1:20,000 map near Villers-Bretonneux July 1918,
in other words the area where the first tank vs tank battle was fought and the Red Baron shot down.

Now, I haven't really looked at this map since I was a kid, and always ass/u/med it belonged to my Mom's dad who had been a regular in the Royal Horse Artillery, recalled to the colours for the Great War.  Since it seemed both topical and a welcome diversion I decided to take a closer look, to see where it was in France and to call up some of the places in Google maps so I could look at street views of houses and terrain. AMAZING technology we have available to us!

However, that's not the point now, while looking at the scales etc I noticed that the map was subject to updates issued by Canadian Corps Intelligence. What? Why would an RHA corporal have a Canadian army map?

That's when I remembered what I had only fairly recently discovered which is that my Dad's father had emigrated from Glasgow to Montreal before WWI, met a nice girl, (also from Glasgow which is where another assumption had earlier led me astray), got married, had a couple of kids then headed off to war. Luckily he came back from the war and fathered my Dad. He died when I was very young and Dad never talked much about his early life or about his father and every one who had known my grandfather was either already dead or beyond questioning  when I found the picture of him in uniform so I had let it drop for the time being.

Today, I looked him up on line and downloaded his service record. He was 27 (!?) when he joined and served as a driver with the Canadian Field Artillery in France from 1915 to 1918. His medical records indicate that he was invalided to hospital as sick a few times but was never wounded. Well, not in action, there is some indication that he had some fun on his annual 2 week leave in 1917.  Anyway the point is, he came home intact so I am here and apparently he brought home a WWI tactical, topographical, map, all marked up with British and German trenches, enemy battery and MG positions, etc!  Thanks Grampa Mac!

Je me souviens.

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

100 Years Ago Today- The Haxifax Explosion

Halifax Before
Picture from Wiki

On the 6th of December 1917 the SS Mont Blanc, loaded with TNT, Pitric Acid, Benzole and Gun Cotton, collided with the SS Emo at the narrowest part of Halifax harbour. The resulting explosion was the largest man made explosion prior to Hiroshima

After. (Picture from Wiki article)
"Over 1,600 people were killed instantly and 9,000 were injured, more than 300 of whom later died.[24] Every building within a 2.6-kilometre (1.6 mi) radius, over 12,000 in total, was destroyed or badly damaged. The shock waves were felt 200 km away. "  (Extract from en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halifax_Explosion

Nature with its usual sense of humour dumped 40 cm of snow on the city the next day as relief efforts were getting into high gear.



Thursday, November 16, 2017

1934 Film Look at Canada in the Great War

Thanks to Rob from the Captain's blog for this.



Published on Nov 3, 2015
This film is a heritage item from Library and Archives Canada and is only available in English.

This film was the first feature length documentary film with sound to be made in Canada. The production team compiled the film throughout the world and from Canadian cameramen who followed troops through training and into combat. Simulated battle scenes are also included. Part 1 - The story of Canadian military participation in WWI. A review is made of the major incidents that lead to declarations of war. Leading personalities are shown. Recruitment and training of soldiers takes place. Part 2 - The Battles of Mons, Ypres, the Somme, and Vimy Ridge. Part 3 - The Battle of Passchendaele. Sequences on the Royal Flying Corps in action on land and in the air. Dominion Day 1918 festivities among Canadian Armed Forces personnel at the front line near Vimy Ridge are captured on camera. End of the war celebrations and commemorations are shown. Exceptional material includes: Princess Patricia dedicating the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry Regiment at Lansdowne Park, August 23, 1914; the sinking of the Szent Istvan, an Austro-Hungarian battleship, where sailors look like ants heaped up on one side and then jump into the sea; new military technology; war ruins and refugees; the American entry into the war; an observation balloon going up in flames; and Canadian railway troops building tracks. Canadian troops hold an Athletic Field Day on Dominion Day 1918; Canadian troops extinguish fires at Cambrai; the Prince of Wales in military uniform surrounded by other officers; soldiers in trenches, in marching formation, cheer news of the end of the war; funeral procession of nurses watch soldiers carry the coffins of nurses killed in an air raid of a hospital in France, May 1918. Officers salute the open grave. The Canadian troupe, The Dumbells, perform before Canadian troops on Dominion Day 1918.

Source: Library and Archives Canada. Veterans Affairs Canada fonds, 1976-0222, IDC 115789.

Saturday, November 11, 2017

Lest We Forget

I never met my Uncle Angus, my father's older brother. Like dad he served in the Royal Canadian Signal Corps during WWII. Unlike dad, he didn't come home.

He is not forgotten.