Breaking the Silence: Veterans' Untold Stories From the Great War to Afghanistan by Ted Barris

Author:Ted Barris [Barris, Ted]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Canada, World War I, HIS027160, Afghan War (2001-), Military, History
ISBN: 9780887628054
Google: l6Vj5AAACAAJ
Publisher: Dundurn
Published: 2009-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

7

FRONT ROW SEAT

TO HISTORY

MY JOURNEY with veterans has taken me from coast to coast in search of their stories, from home front to the front lines, from their enlistment to their demobilization, and from the theory of training to the reality of the sharp end. Throughout that experience, I have listened, learned, and been enlightened about Canada and Canadians in wartime. Occasionally I’ve been enlisted too. As I’ve suggested here, since I began meeting with veterans, I have periodically been invited to support, endorse, and even advocate for them—to raise awareness, to raise funds, and even to raise the flag, so to speak.

I have to admit Garth Webb’s cause célèbre took a little longer to win me over. I first met the tall, ex-artillery officer one Saturday morning in the late 1990s. As I frequently did, I was sitting in as substitute host of the radio program Fresh Air. Late in the program, during the playing of a disc of music, in lumbered Webb with his briefcase of promotional literature and a handshake as big as a bear’s. I invited him to sit in the guest’s chair, and moments later we began our conversation about his incredible plan—to build a museum in France to commemorate the service of all Canadians during the Second World War. He called it the “Canada Normandy Project.” His premise was not new. His optimism was.

“Tens of thousands of tourists visit Normandy and the invasion coast each year,” he explained in the interview, reading almost verbatim from the brochure he had in his hands. “But Canada’s contribution to the D-Day landings and the liberation of Europe is largely ignored.”

In truth, the “tens of thousands of tourists” had little to do with the genesis of Webb’s idea. That had actually come from children. As many Canadian military outfits had done in the decades after the war, members of Webb’s 14th Field Regiment of the Royal Canadian Artillery kept returning to Europe on revisits. They paid their respects to the war dead at many of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission cemeteries in France, Belgium, Holland, and Germany. They reminisced about the way they were a generation ago. And they enjoyed the hospitality of European citizens who had not forgotten what a Canadian citizen army had sacrificed to liberate their cities and countryside. Most enthusiastic in their sense of gratitude were the children of those liberated communities. In one Dutch town Garth described to me, the young people showered the vets with flowers, embraced them like long-lost relatives, and sang songs of freedom in their honour. When the children had finished their demonstration of affection, Webb asked them if, in return, they’d like to come to Canada. Somehow the regiment raised the money and the children enjoyed a three-week tour of the country. The next step, it seemed, was a return visit, sending Canadian children to some of the places those Canadian troops had liberated.

But aside from the towns themselves, some empty beaches, a few tired-looking commemorative markers, and

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