All week I have been struggling on how to mark Remembrance Day and right up to this morning, I have not been unable to find a fitting way to mark the day. So, in the end, I thought that I would remember the veteran I loved most: my mother’s father, my grandfather.
He was born in 1899 and grew up in a modest farm in Cole Creek Queens County, New Brunswick. At seventeen, he was legally too young for war but the niceties were easily ignored back in January 1916; and so, he joined the Fighting 26th Battalion and was soon shipped overseas to war a few months later. He thought it would be one grand adventure and a chance to see the world beyond the country. Little did he realize that a trench at Vimy Ridge or Passchendaele looked much the same as a ditch dug in the Mirmachi. My mother still remembers hearing him sing his famous "army digging song":
"We are in the army, we’re not behind the plow, digging a ditch, son of bitch, we are in the army now."
Grandfather rarely talked about the war. By the time I was old enough to ask questions his sense of loss from those years had not lessen any. His uniform, medals, his Sam Brown belt, and messenger pouch were all packed away. Never to see the light of day until my son, Montana Francis, came to claim his room in the last homey house in the middle of the woods. The miracle was that this achingly young scout and messenger survived the war intact but not without wounds. I marvel at how fortunate I am that he survived when so many did not. From the spring of 1916 there was not a battle that it was his misfortune not to miss until the end of July 1918 when he was wounded for the second and last time in battle.
I was about 13 and it was during one of the annual summer treks home that I found his war photograph album. I brought them to him in the kitchen to ask about the war years and his part in the WW1. My mother and grandmother were quick to admonish me not to ask and they ordered me to put the album away. Asking Grandfather about the war was taboo in the family but for some unknown reason Grandfather told them it was okay. He took me outside to the front porch where he answered all my questions about the people in the album and the war.
He did not glamourize it and turn it into one long epic adventure. He spoke of life in the trenches being always hungry, tired, wet and cold, the rats, the bugs, the constant noise; and fear that never left your side. He spoke of Christmas in the trenches and sharing Christmas rations with the Germans; and utter madness that war wrought. For Boxing Day found you; and duty and obligation forced you to go back to the business of killing those you had just shared a cuppa with just the day before. The utter horror at listening to the sounds horse’s make when they have been injured and left to suffer because the demands of battle do not allow a time out for mercy. He kept his sanity by taking long walks in the woods whenever he had opportunity to do so. The first time he was injured was in April 1917 at Vimy Ridge. He was patched up only to be sent back and was seriously wounded again in July 1918. This time the injuries were substantial enough to begin the long trek home and he sat out the last few months of the war at a hospital in England.
In my naiveté and ignorance, I asked the question all soldier’s dread – did you kill anyone? He answered, “G-d, I hope not. When I was ordered to fire I closed my eyes and prayed for the Lord to have mercy on my soul.”
The war shaped the man he was to become. He returned from war and shunned “society” preferring the quiet of the woods and the sound of birds. He became a fur trapper (illegal) and wood’s guide (legal). He met my grandmother and began the long struggle to marry her. He had to fight all of her more than numerous brothers and best them: and if that wasn’t enough, he still had to win the respect of her father for the right to marry her. It took him 11 years from their first meeting until their wedding day. In 1979, we brought my grandfather home from the hospital with his left side in a state of semi-paralysis. The next morning, him and I, sat alone on the front porch of my childhood home and watched the sunrise together sipping tea. He spoke of the first time he met my grandmother and how he was swept away by her beauty and grace. After all those years, he still found in her company, the solace that the woods had always offered his spirit.
My Grandfather was a quiet man, he preferred to listen rather than speak. He was not much good in company except with us girls. I spent my childhood running after him and walking in the woods he so loved. To this day, stories are told about my grandfather among the locals, and even after all this time, he is sorely missed. There was no one who knew him that did not experience the evidence of his generosity; from the poorest of the poor to even those that had grievously wronged him. He held no grudges and preferred peace. He said he felt that the secret of life was to take all that life could throw at you and at the end of the day still be able to laugh. No one or nothing should rob you of your humanity, and if, you could keep your humanity intact, in spite of all the cruelties of the day, then you will triumph over life.
I gave my first son the name Francis in honour of his memory and Montana Francis wears it with pride which makes me smile; as unbeknownst to Montana, the first Francis hated that name with a passion and just barely tolerated Frank. There is not a time, when I think of my grandfather, that I do not wish I could go back and have him put his arms around me and say "my poor wee little soul' and tell me bear stories, just one more time. I deeply regret that my grandfather had not lived to see his namesake. There is much that he would have loved to share with him. There is a part of me that wonders whether when we bear the name of those that came before us; do we also then, manage to take a piece of their spirit with us into the future? I pray that it be so, for I can think of no finer thing for my much beloved son that he possess the generosity of spirit and the fortitude of his great grandfather who possessed uncommon valour as a common virtue.
