My War Years

I think it will never end. It just goes on and on - from the week I start grade one in September 1939 until going into grade six in September 1945.  This is most of my life! Just as I am growing into an awareness of the world, six years of a world at war is stamped upon my memory. 

On that first day of September my innocent young mind is diverted from wondering what school will be like, to puzzling over what is happening in the wide world beyond. Listening in on the meal-time conversations of Mom and Dad and Gottlieb, the hired man, I hear them talking about German armies attacking the country of Poland. They seem worried, but I don’t understand. Why they are so concerned about something happening so far away?

The sinking of SS Athenia

Two days later there is solemn news emanating from the shiny wooden console radio in the living room corner; Dad’s home country of Britain has declared war on Germany. On that same day there is news that a German U-boat has torpedoed and sunk the passenger liner SS Athenia. I can see that this news upsets Dad, and especially Mom. The Athenia brought them back from England just one year earlier. They are concerned about the crew members they came to regard as friends. I feel their relief when they hear from the static-punctuated radio news report that most of the passengers and crew are saved. (We later learn that of the 1418 on board, 98 passengers and 19 crew were lost.)

With all this talk of war I am anxious. “Why does there have to be a war?”, I ask Mom. She explains, “The German leaders are like bullies, having their armies take over another country. The war is to try to stop them.” When she defines “bully” for me I see the war as a kind of punishment, which, from my own experience, I do understand.

A week later, the day before my sixth birthday, I am far less concerned about the war and more about the presents I might get, and the birthday cake that Mom is making. Its mouth-watering chocolate layers are separated by crab-apple jelly and buried in a generous coating of chocolate icing. But that isn’t all; inserted within the lower cake level are a half-dozen pewter tokens of animals and things, but most important to me, there is also a nickel. Whoever gets the nickel is the lucky one because they can could use it to exchange for a pack of gum, a bottle of pop, or a chocolate bar. This time I got the nickel!

Making a birthday cake is not all that is on my mother’s mind. We have heard on the news that Canada has followed Britain’s lead and declared war on Germany. Mom says she hopes it will be a short war - and not like the Great War of 1914-1918. In that conflict, her older brother Elmer McKitrick was wounded; her fiancé Sam Hosford killed; and other friends and acquaintances either killed or wounded. Both Uncle Elmer and Sam were University of Alberta students who left their studies to become commissioned officers in the Canadian Army. Dad had two brothers in that war. Uncle Ted, who farmed north of Edmonton, enlisted in the Canadian Infantry. He was killed in 1918, a few weeks after earning the Distinguished Conduct Medal for “conspicuous gallantry and devotion to duty”.  Uncle Bill, a Captain in the London Rifles of the British Army came through okay. Even after hearing this family history, the start of war is still very remote for me. Of more immediate concern is the novelty and challenge of my first few days at school.

As Dad listens to the radio news daily, I often hear the words “Mr. Chamberlain”. I know that name. It’s the family that lives in a two-storey brick house on a hill-top a mile west of our farm. “Are they related to the guy on the news?”, I ask Dad. He smiles, “No, I don’t think they have any connection to the British Prime Minister.”

By the end of September 1939, there is less war news on the radio. The war fades in my awareness as school becomes the focus of my life.  (Poland had surrendered, and the French Army has disengaged from a brief encounter with the German Army on their border). The news is now about air raids and naval battles, and none about armies fighting each other on land. At dinner one night in early 1940 Dad tells Mom about an article in the Edmonton Journal that refers to “The Phoney War”. “There’s nothing phoney about it,” he says. “Britain has sent an army to help defend France and it will soon have to face the might of the German army returning from their conquest of Poland”, he declares.

In early May of 1940 the radio news confirms Dad’s prediction. The German armies invade Belgium, Holland and eventually France. The British and French armies are no match for the German blitzkrieg. The British are driven out of Europe and forced to abandon all their tanks and other military equipment at the French port of Dunkirk. (Here, during ten days at the end of May and early June, 340,000 British troops are evacuated to England by about 800 commandeered ships and boats of every description. Each makes several trips, converging from dozens of English Channel ports to accomplish a spectacular rescue.) By mid-June Holland, Belgium and France surrender to the German forces.

When I picture German tanks and soldiers advancing through these countries, I wonder what it is like for those who live there. A pang of worry hits me as I imagine how terrible it would be if they came through our neighborhood and our farm. If they capture England I think, maybe they could come here too!

My concerns about the war dissipate on June 8^th. And no one else in our family is giving it any attention because it is the day my brother Owen arrives to begin his life journey. In the days that follow, although there is still worried talk among the adults about German armies threatening to invade Britain, my older brother Dick and I are happily distracted by the new baby in the house.

From Dad and Mom’s explanations that summer, I understand that there is intensive German bombing of Britain. (I later learn that one reason for the bombardment is to destroy the Royal Air Force, thereby achieving the air dominance that would make a German invasion feasible). The “Battle of Britain” lasts from mid-July to late October when the Royal Air Force is victorious, and any German invasion plans are called off.  The expression of relief from my parents reduces the knot of worry I feel in my stomach when I think about the war.

I love gazing out our farmhouse sun-porch windows. I savour the views: the skyline of Edmonton on the western horizon; cars and trucks on the highway, each followed by a billowing cloud of dust; the ever-changing sky; and the robins, wrens, warblers and blackbirds flitting about on the caragana hedges. I think little about the war until one day late in 1940 when I spot something unusual on the highway a quarter mile away. There is a short line of cars with a white-doored police car at their head. “What is going on?” I ask Mom, curious. “Remember when Dad and I went to the school this summer to register?  Well, everyone over sixteen in the whole country had to register with the government (Under the requirements of the National Resources Mobilization Act). We filled out a form revealing where and when we were born, our ethic origin, occupation, work history and so on. Later we each received an identification card by registered mail to show to police if stopped in a random check. This is one of those checks.” I wonder aloud, “Why does everyone have to be registered?” “Two reasons”, she goes on, “One is to help the government find people to assign to work that supports the war effort if they are needed. The other is to make sure everyone is in Canada legally, and not an enemy spy.” I can’t imagine them finding any spies around here. They must just be checking to make sure everybody is registered, I decide.

Poster at Salisbury Store

The war becomes much more real for me the next year when I am in grade two. War maps and posters with grotesque images of enemy soldiers appear on the wall at the back of the schoolroom. The posters and the teacher encourage us to invest our quarters in stamps to complete a War Savings Certificate. We can buy them at the Salisbury Store and at any bank or post office. It works like this: A small folder with sixteen blank squares is given to every student who wants one. When all the squares are covered by a stamp we send this four-dollar investment, along with our name and address, to the War Savings Committee in Ottawa. In seven and one-half years they will send us a certificate for five dollars. After a few months of using part of our weekly allowance, Dick and I each complete one and mail it in.

The war becomes a world war in 1941. That spring German armies invade Russia, despite, Dad tells us, the two counties having signed a pact not to attack each other. Then in December, Japanese planes unleash a surprise bombing attack on the U.S. naval base of Pearl Harbour. Two thousand Americans are killed; 200 aircraft destroyed; and four battleships sunk, with four more badly damaged. The Japanese goal is to stop the United States from interfering with their conquest of south-east Asia.  The United States is now in the war.

It is finally clear to me which countries are our enemies and which our allies. Germany, Italy and Japan are aligned against us and are known as the “Axis Powers”. Britain and the British Commonwealth, United States, China, Russia, and forces from Poland, France and other occupied countries are with us and designated “The Allies”. (One exception is that Russia did not declare war on Japan; probably to avoid their Pacific port of Vladivostok from being attacked.)

Tiger Moth trainers

Change is now in the air - quite literally. The sky over our farm is populated by the droning and roaring of Tiger Moth and Finch bi-planes, and twin-engine Ansons sent aloft from the British Commonwealth Air Training base in Edmonton. Foreign air crew, mostly from Australia and New Zealand, receive training here, and at similar bases across Canada. Two Australian trainees visit our school to tell us about their country and why they are here.

I am fascinated by the aerial antics on display: tailspins, stalls, low-level hedge-hopping and formation flying. I want to know all about the different planes, so I send away for a free “Aircraft Spotter’s Guide” to be able to identify them all. Soon I can identify their type by the sound of their engines as well as by their profile and speed.

Even more aerial activity is generated by the construction of the Alaska Highway. Beginning in March of 1942 dozens of American C-47 Dakota transports, some towing gliders, are bring thousands of American soldiers and engineering contractors through Edmonton. (Their numbers eventually reach over 16,000; my cousin Jean eventually marries one of them). The 1400-mile highway from Dawson Creek to Alaska is built in less than nine months – an incredible accomplishment. When complete, the Americans no longer need to rely on air transport to defend Alaska against a possible invasion by the Japanese.

American aircraft in 1942

A new kind of excitement arrives with the next phase of the aerial display. Fast high-powered war planes roar through the blue. My Spotters Guide helps me identify the fighter planes as dual-fuselage P-38 Lightnings, P-51 Mustangs, P-39 Airacobras, P-63 Kingcobras, and P-40 Kittyhawks, and B-25 Mitchell and C-45 Expeditor bombers. The Lightnings, Mustangs, and some Mitchells have the American white star insignia on their fuselage and wings, but to my surprise, nearly all the others have a red star instead. As Dad and I watch from the hay-field as they loom out of the south-east sky and roar overhead toward Edmonton, I notice something strange. The insignia on their wings is not all the same. I ask Dad, “Why do some planes have white stars and some red?” “The white stars are on American planes going to defend the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. Those with red stars are being sent to Russia by the Americans via Alaska to help them fight the German armies”, he explains. (Information available after the war reveals that the United States had supplied over 9,000 planes to Russia, most passing through Edmonton just a few miles from the farm).

 

Extent of German-controlled area in 1942 

On the regularly updated war maps in the Edmonton Journal and on the wall at the back of our schoolroom ominous black shades show the areas under German control. They show that the German armies are rolling through Russia and approaching the major cities of Moscow, Stalingrad (now Volgograd) and Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). Most of European Russia is under German occupation, and their major cities are under siege. I see now why the Russians need all the help they can get.

Activities to support the war effort in Canada are referred to as the “Home Front”. Here too, things pick up. In 1942, under the War Measures Act, wage and price controls have been in place for three years. If it weren’t for price control, war-time shortages would have sent prices skyrocketing. This is good for kids like us because pop, gum and chocolate bars remain at 5 cents each until 1945.

Rationing is introduced to ensure a supply of critical food items for our troops, and to send to Britain. Everyone is issued ration books with tear-out coupons dated for when they can be used. Butter, sugar, meat, tea, and coffee each has its own ration book and there is an extra sugar allowance available during summer canning season. Gasoline, car tires and silk stockings are also rationed.

Unlike most city dwellers, our family suffers little inconvenience from rationing. Our meat supply is supplemented by the non-laying birds Dad extracts from the hen-house flock. Sugar is supplemented by honey from Mr. Bohonos’s hives out behind the implement shed. Butter, however, is a different matter. Our farm ships whole milk to the Edmonton City Dairy and no cream is separated from which to make our own butter. I can still hear echoes of parental reproaches of “too much butter!” as I smear it on my bread, buns or mashed potatoes. Incidentally, the bread I haul the quarter-mile home from the Salisbury Store on my little toboggan is no longer sliced. This is a result of the government’s efforts to eliminate resources “wasted” on non-essential commercial activity.

My Aunt Eva, Mom’s sister, gets involved in another Home Front activity. She leaves her teaching job at a private girls’ school in Edmonton and goes off to work in a gun-sight factory in Ontario. Mom says she volunteered to go in response to urging from the National Selective Service (NSS). “Did she have to go?” I ask. “No, she didn’t have to,” Mom replies, “but the NSS could have forced her if they wanted to.” (The NSS combined Unemployment Insurance data with citizen registration information to assess labour availability as a basis for directing people to war-time jobs.)

There is another Home Front activity that worries me. Growing up, the westward view from our sun-porch window after dark offered a spectacle I loved to ponder - the twinkling string of Edmonton’s city lights. They have always been there, anchoring our place in space. This is about to change. In the fall of 1942 local radio stations announce the first of many air raid drills in Edmonton. This one will include a complete blackout at ten o’clock in the evening. On the scheduled night Dad, Mom, Dick and I station ourselves at the sun-porch window watching the western horizon as the hour approaches. The strand of lights starts thinning out across its length. In a matter of minutes, all are gone - there is not a glimmer. An anxious pang pierces my gut. “Will the Germans or the Japs bomb Edmonton?”, I ask. Dad reassures me, “There is little chance of that. But the government wants bigger cities to be ready, just in case”. Hearing the word “chance” does little to reduce the worry swirling in my nine-year-old mind. (Survey results released after the war indicate that 62% of British Columbia respondents actually expected an air raid during the summer of 1942).

Maps of the fighting fronts in 1943 begin to reflect that the tide of the war is finally turning. The Russians are advancing against the German armies; British Commonwealth and American troops have recaptured North Africa from the German and Italian armies; and the Americans and ANZAC’s (Australia New Zealand Army Corps) have halted the Japanese advance into the South-West Pacific. My lingering anxiety gradually eases. This turning point has taken four long years. While it may not seem like much time to an adult, as for me, I can hardly remember the time when there was no war. The war has been a big part of my life.

My fascination with the drama of unfolding events overshadows the horror and tragedy that I know those directly involved must endure, perhaps because it’s not much in the news. I guess this is something people don’t want to hear about. A memorable source of news is the sober and stentorian radio voice of Lorne Greene (later known for his role on the TV series Bonanza).  On the half-hour CBC evening news, the whole family gathers by the living room radio to hear about the land, sea, and air battles from all fronts. These broadcasts sometimes include Matthew Halton describing the intensifying bombing attacks on Britain, especially London. I also pore over The Edmonton Journal and Maclean’s magazine to keep up to date on the war. But Dad says that we don’t get all the news because of censorship. “The government minimizes bad news to help keep up morale on the Home Front”, he says. Casualty lists are not censored, and I notice that the lists of wounded, killed or missing servicemen are growing longer as Canadians engage the Germans in the Italian Campaign. Casualties in naval operations, and in the widespread actions of the RCAF Fighter and Bomber Commands also contribute to these records of the human cost of war.

Although about half the Alberta men between 18 and 45 serve in the Armed Forces, this proportion is not reflected in our farming community. Those who do not volunteer for service, and who work on a farm, receive the agricultural labour deferment. I know of only one local farm boy who volunteers: Flying Officer Kenneth Reed, my half-brother’s cousin. He is killed when his bomber crashes in England in 1944. Ken’s sister lives across the road from us and I feel a pang of sympathy for her and the rest of the family. This is the closest to home that the real tragedy of the war ever got for me.

Not all our neighbors are farmers. Ernest Ball is a carpenter who lives just down the road on forty-acres that he does not farm. The two older boys in the family are drafted for military service because they have no farm labour deferment. They choose not to serve and spend some time in jail until their conscientious objector status is confirmed. Some unkind schoolmates call them “yellow-bellies”. Their young brother Harvey, my best pal, wants me to understand why they refuse to go to war. One day as we pass by the little white Salisbury Church on the way home from school he says, “let’s go in, I want to show you something”. We quietly open the never-locked front door and go in. There is nobody around, so we make our way down the aisle flanked by seven 6-person pews on either side. On the raised platform at the front stands a varnished single-pedestal wooden pulpit. Resting on it is a large well-worn leather-bound Bible. Harv picks it up, riffles through the pages to Exodus 20:13, and reads aloud “Thou shalt not kill”. Although I understand, I am not fully convinced. “Why should some have to go to war and others not?”, I silently wonder. “Look at this”, Harv says, as his finger slides down to verse 17. He snickers as it stops on the word “ass”. “It means donkey”, I offer a bit defensively, “it’s not a swear word when it’s in the Bible.”

At supper that night I ask Dad about that commandment. “If killing is a sin how can war be justified?”. He explains, “Many people think that the word “kill” in the commandment means “murder”, and that killing in defense of freedom, against an evil enemy, is not murder. I guess Harvey’s family don’t think that way and feel strongly about it”. I’m curious, “What do you think Dad?” He says that war is wrong, and we need to find a better way. I know he is right and don’t ask any more about it.

Much of our news in late 1943 and early 1944 recounts the battles of the 1^st Canadian Corps in Italy against German forces after the surrender of Italy in October 1943. Casualties reported in the Edmonton Journal are increasing. We don’t know until after the war that nearly 6000 Canadian troops are killed and about 20,000 wounded in the Italian Campaign. (When I do learn this I think, wow, twice the number of people that pack into the Edmonton Gardens to watch a Flyers hockey game were killed in Italy alone!) The Corps fights on until early 1945 when they are withdrawn to join the Canadian First Army liberating Holland from German forces after the Normandy Invasion.

June 6, 1944 - The Allied Invasion on the French Coast

Finally, on June 6, 1944 that long-anticipated Allied invasion of Northern Europe is launched. Our sixteen-year-old cousin Jim Thurlow from Toronto is helping on our farm that summer. His keen interest in the war provides a window into unfolding events in Normandy. He explains the use of artificial harbours (called Mulberries) to supply the invading Allied armies. Jim says that because all the French ports on the channel are heavily defended by the Germans, and landing supplies on a beach is slow and dangerous, an alternative was developed in the form of temporary harbours. Two of these are towed across the channel and set up, one for the American armies and one for the British and Canadians. A storm destroys the American Mulberry after a week, but the other is used until the port of Cherbourg is captured and becomes operational. Following the news on the radio, and the maps in the Journal, I see that it takes a month to capture that port and another six weeks to restore it to use after the Germans had done their best to destroy its docking facilities. Now that the Allied foothold on Europe is secure, I feel relieved and confident that the German armies will continue to be driven back.

When we go back to school at the end of summer, the casualty lists in the paper grow even longer. Although we later learn that nearly 5,000 Canadian troops are killed and 15,000 wounded in the Invasion and the few weeks that follow, what dominates the current news is their victories in battle. The stories keep coming and casualty numbers keep mounting as the Canadian First Army recaptures the coastal regions of France, Belgium and especially Holland. Our Canadian troops liberate Holland and re-open the strategic port of Antwerp, critical in supplying Allies forces.

Pictures in the paper of Canadian troops in Holland make me realize how fortunate I am to be away from a war zone. They show our men sharing their rations with starving Dutch children. Food supplies had been cut off to that region and according to the news, people were eating tulip bulbs to survive. Even so, we later learn that about 20,000 died of starvation.

Propaganda poster

The back wall of our schoolroom is now covered with different posters, some exhorting us to buy more War Savings Certificates, and others depicting the two remaining Axis leaders, Hitler of Germany and Tojo of Japan, as sub-human monsters, still intent on enslaving the world. I know these images are exaggerations and wonder why it’s necessary to portray them like this. Maybe it’s to induce us to buy more War Savings Certificates to help in their defeat.

Shortly after the Allied Invasion of Europe two German innovations are in the news. The first is the use of rocket-propelled flying bombs. There are two types; the V-1 and the V-2. The V-1, or buzz-bomb as the Londoners call it, is launched from France into a low-level flight designed to stop over London where it falls and explodes. Reports are that many are shot down by fighter planes or anti-aircraft guns before they get to their target. These rain down from June 1944 until September when Allied armies overrun the launching sites in France. About this time the V-2’s start arriving in England. Their launch sites are farther away in Belgium and Holland and not yet captured. A diagram in the paper that shows how they are different from the V-1’s. The V-1’s fly about 400 mph at 2500 feet, whereas the V-2’s travel in a fifty-mile-high arc and come almost straight down at 3500 mph giving no chance of interception. The V-2 offensive lasts from September 1944 to March 1945. With the focus of the news on the battles in Europe, and, I suppose, to keep up morale, we hear little about the impact of these raids. (After the war there are reports of nearly 10,000 V-1’s being launched with up to 100 coming in per day during their peak. About 1100 V-2’s are sent up destroying nearly 20,000 houses per day in London during the peak of devastation.)

   

The second innovation is the use of jet-powered aircraft by both the Germans and the British. My Aircraft Spotter’s Guide predates the operation of these planes. It does refer to them in general as experimental craft but offers few clues as to their range, speed, or configuration. I just hope they don’t give any advantage to the enemy that would prolong the war.

At eleven years of age I have become a serious student of the war. Cousin Jim’s tutelage last summer spurred my learning. I devour every newspaper and magazine article about the war that I can lay my hands on. I remember Dad saying that everything we read has been subject to some level of censorship, and that the bad news is absent or minimized. For example, I read about the German Army killing some Canadian prisoners in France, portrayed as an atrocity, which it was. It is not until well after the war that I learned that Allied troops were verbally ordered not to take any prisoners immediately after the D-Day Invasion. They did not want to divert any scarce resources to guard them and feed them, perhaps putting the whole Invasion in jeopardy. Maybe the Germans were simply responding in kind to the Allied actions.

Throughout April, Allied armies steadily advance against the Germans on all fronts. By the end of the month American and British armies reclaimed most of Italy from the German forces. Meanwhile, as mentioned above, the Canadian First Army of 450,000 men liberate Holland. American and British armies advance into Germany with American troops meeting up with Russians south of Berlin on April 25^th. On the 28^th the Russians take Berlin, and on May 2 the Edmonton Journal proclaims in four-inch-high letters “HITLER DEAD”. We learn that he committed suicide in his Berlin bunker. A few days later, on May 8, Germany formally surrenders and the war in Europe is over. We hear a solemn voice on the CBC news that night; “This is Matthew Halton reporting from London. No more Canadians will die.”

The war against Japan continues for another three months. The news of this part of the war is less interesting to me because there are no Canadian forces involved. It is mostly about Americans driving the Japanese from The Philippines and other Pacific islands, and the intensive bombing of Japanese cities. There are growing reports of Japanese kamikaze pilots being used to stall the American advances. These pilots fly their bomb-filled aircraft into American navy ships. I wonder what it’s like for these pilots to know that they are not coming back. It disturbs me to think about it. After the war there are reports of nearly four thousand Japanese pilots dying in this way, but far fewer, reports say, than the number of Americans killed in their attacks.

Hiroshima after the bomb

The bombing of Japan culminates with the Americans’ atomic bombing of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6^th and 9^th respectively. Hiroshima is 90% destroyed by the blast with 80,000 people killed immediately and thousands more dying later of radiation sickness. The Nagasaki bomb immediately kills about 40,000 people. (Ten years later my cousin Jim Thurlow, mentioned earlier, marries Setsuko Nakamura, a Hiroshima survivor he meets while teaching in Japan. Setsuko was just over a mile from the center of the blast which killed 8 members of her family plus 350 of her classmates and teachers. In 2006 she was awarded the Order of Canada for her outstanding contribution to social work and her tireless pursuit of the abolition of nuclear weapons. In 2017 she was co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her work on behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. She was only 13 when her burned and bloated sister died four days later after the bomb. She said she stepped over dead bodies to watch soldiers dump gasoline on the bodies of her sister and her five-year nephew in a shallow grave before burning and burying them. She said she was so numb from shock she couldn’t even cry.)

Less than a week after the atomic bombings, the Emperor of Japan announces an unconditional surrender to the Allies. Finally, the war is over. Although my parents are relieved, I sense no celebration. I know the reason is that even though the atomic bombs may have brought an end to the war, they also brought a horrible death to thousands upon thousands of innocent people.

It is September 4^th, 1945, two days after the formal signing of the peace treaty with Japan, and I am walking home from my first day in grade six. Exactly six years earlier, as the war began, I had trod that same road. While the road hasn’t changed, the innocent of that day no longer exists. Our small group of boys walk a while in silence before I make conversation, stating the obvious, “Germany was beaten in May, and now Japan is finished too”. Lloyd, one of the older boys responds. “Russia’s next” he announces confidently. I am taken aback. “But they were one of our allies”, I protest. “Doesn’t matter”, he says, “there is a saying, ‘my enemy’s enemy is my ally'. The Russians fought the Germans, so they were allies. But don’t you know that the Communists are like the Nazis? - they also want to dominate the world and need to be stopped!” In my geopolitical naivety I quietly think he doesn’t know what he is talking about. Apparently adult conversations have been reaching his ears that that haven’t yet reached mine.  A few years later the Cold War between the Communist nations of Russia and China, and the rest of the United Nations, bears out Lloyd’s pronouncement.

In 1950 the first major conflict of the Cold War breaks out in Korea. Canada is sending 25,000 troops into battle once again. The Korean War lasts for three more years. As I move into my teenage years I think that wars are just the way of the world. They have always occurred and probably always will. But now with atomic bombs, I deeply hope that they will not.