SOMETIMES I think we should forget Remembrance Day. We are remembering something, after all, that began 48 years ago and ended 42 years ago. In the case of the First World War, the time is not far off when there will be no one left from the brave days of old.
But then I go into the West Van library and see that a page has been turned in the illuminated Book of Remembrance, as it has been every week since 1950 when Mrs. Marion Grigsby, formerly of Taylor Way, finished her long labor of love.
Or I pass the little war memorial on the other side of the street and see that someone has put fresh flowers on it. So I change my mind because people cannot forget what they remember, even though nearly half a century has passed since the last big dust-up.
The ones who never came back would also have their doubts about Remembrance Day. They would say with a grin that for most Canadians the day has become just another holiday.
No one’s to blame if it has. For those born in the year Mrs. Grigsby presented her beautiful book to the library, 1939-45 must seem almost as remote as Waterloo. Time like an ever rolling stream...
So I don’t suppose many look at the names that shine up in gold through the glass case. But I often do. And I wonder what their
stories were. Put it down to morbid curiosity or something.
What happened to W.O.2 FRY, Thomas William, who lost his life in the last month of the war? Or to W.O.l HUMPHREYS, Oliver Elvidge, killed in March, 1944, some months
before D-Day? Was he fighting in Italy?
How did Pte. LAYTON, Peter Tolson, come to be with a British regiment, the Sherwood Foresters? And did Lance Corporal MARTIN, Robin McCalley, of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, die in some Japanese hell-hole of a Japanese prison camp as did so many Winnipegers? The date of his death — September 1944 — would indicate that he might have.
Others are not so difficult to define. Lt. ALLEN, Carlton, was with the 28th Canadian Armoured Regiment, otherwise known as the B.C. Regiment or “The Dukes.” He died in August, 1944, the month they fought for Hill 195, near Caen.
The engagement was an epic of valor. The 28th kept coming up the hill and the Germans kept shooting them to bits. Forty-four
tanks were lost that day, August 9, and the regiment suffered 200 casualties. All of its senior officers were killed.
Hill 195 was not taken. But not for lack of trying.
Art Biddlecombe of North Vancouver survived that battle, as did Capt. John Toogood, later Col. Toogood, who used to be an executive with the Vancouver Sun.
“The reason I became a colonel,” he told me some years ago, “was that there was no one else left.”
The public cannot touch the Book of Remembrance. But the ever-helpful library staff produced a copy and I counted the names. There are 69, which is an impressive number considering that West Van was a small place in those days with a population of about 8,500.
If the proportion of air force deaths is anything to go by, most West Van men were attracted by flying. Of the 69, 42 were in the Royal Canadian Air Force and one was in the Royal Air Force. Twenty-one were in the army, and five in the Royal Canadian Navy or Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve.
There is some poetry in the book. It is not great poetry, but it fits.
“Honor for them that watched the waves,
“That stormed the ridge, that dared the air;
“That claimed of right unsullied graves,
“And slumber with contentment there. ”
All in all, I really do think it’s a bit too soon to forget.
“‘The reason I became a colonel, he told me some years ago, “was that there was no one else left. ”*