Serving in the military is a family tradition for Ben Boyden. “I’m proud to be in the army. I joined for a reason,” he said. Boyden, 22, joined the 48th Highlanders of Canada in November 2008, when he was 17 years old. Now a corporal in the reserves, he enjoys the experiences that the military has provided him.
As a child, Marilyn Trainor remembered the music of the Elgin Regiment brass band from across the street in her St. Thomas, Ont., home. “I always wanted to be in the (military),” she said.
Lawrene Arsenault and her brother Bill McDonald were always close, but when McDonald went overseas with the Canadian Army in the Second World War, Arsenault really felt the distance. “We didn’t hear from him much,” Arsenault said. “The part of the army he was in was the artillery and he was on the front line all the time, so I never got to really write to him.
When the Second World War broke out, the choice for Hugh Brown was straightforward. “Many chose to join the Navy. Others wanted to be in the Army,” he said. “Being part of the Air Force just attracted me,” Brown said.
Enid Elford’s wartime experience gave her access to guns, but nobody was shooting back. “I was in what they called Tin Pan Alley, where they worked on the Bren-gun magazines,” Elford said. “They had to bang them into shape and it was noisy.”
It happened on a night in May of 1944. Fred Davies remembered the cannon shell from an enemy fighter aircraft flying past his face. It ripped into the engine of his bomber. “The engine and wing… blew up,” he remembered, “(creating) an immediate ball of constant flame about 20 feet or higher.”
A can of Spam transports Bud Flavelle back in memory to when he was 18 years old and a crewman aboard a Second World War warship. “One of my shipmates and I had been making Spam sandwiches one night and inadvertently left the can out,” he said. “It was one of those with teeth that ran around it … When my friend went to get up (from his hammock) a wave hit (the ship) and he landed on his butt on this can of spam. He just yelled like hell.”
Margaret Haliburton is proud of the contribution of Canadian women during the Second World War. However, joining the navy, she admits, was not her idea. “My mother told me to,” she said.
Isabella Meltz recently started lighting a yarhzeit candle every year for her uncle. In the Jewish tradition, the candle signifies remembrance on the anniversary of someone’s death. An unexpected encounter with a curious journalist provided Meltz the opportunity to revisit her uncle’s memory and preserve the few details of his death as a Canadian soldier during the Second World War.
It was a cold, damp and miserable morning in 1946. The Second World War had ended and Pilot Officer Leonard Barnett was responsible for the inspection of German units. Barnett and his driver left the town of Celle, Germany, and headed out on assignment.