WW1 Canadian History Tour

Self | 8/20/2001 | self

[Little Bill]

I was doing a Family History Tour on those of my family that served in the Canadian Army in WW1. My Grand Father admitted that he was drunk when he enlisted when the war broke out, fishing, booze and being 22 had something to do with it.

My Great Uncle Leo enlisted in the New Foundland Regiment a bit later but he was Canadian from PEI. New FoundLand was Empire, kind of curious about the process.

[Little Bill]

Cankukistan Help.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLgzhZk88BI&feature=related

[Little Bill]

Help Ping.

[Verginius Rufus]

Newfoundland did not become part of Canada until 1949. Until then it was a separate British colony.

[Andyman]

When I got my great uncle’s WWI enlistment papers, I found my wife had regularly walked past his house on her way to school at the University of Regina, some 57 years later.

[nathanbedford]

Liberals talk about the banality of evil but perhaps we to think about the banality of heroism. The whole idea of the American ethos is a man who rises above himself when the chips are down.

All good screenwriting, for example, accepts this fundamental and transcendental truth. The hero starts out as an antihero, he discloses by inadvertence his essential goodness of character to the audience, he is subsequently confronted with a situation which makes him choose righteousness against all odds over evil, which of course he does, he triumphs over evil and gets the girl.

And I think the cheesy Hollywood script writers have got it about right. The kids who sign up at the time of the revolution because the girls will look at them in their new uniforms and who, almost in spite of themselves and certainly without calculation, will go on to become winter soldiers, boys becoming men, heroes, is what the American myth is about.

Alvin York comes to mind

[Little Bill]

That my FRiend I know, but he was from Prince Edward Island, a strange and wonderful place, that still makes good shine, and was Canadian.

[Tax-chick]

My grandfather, who lived in Northern Ireland at the time, ran away from home and joined the army in 1914, when he was 14, using one of his older brothers’ birth certificates. According to my mother, he said one of the happiest days of his life was when his mother turned up at the training camp, with *his* birth certificate, to retrieve him!

[Little Bill]

Bedford Forrest, I had people on both sides, is one of my heroes, but what compels people to enlist in a foreign adventure.

[Little Bill]

That is funny. My father graduated from UU in 1937 and went to work for Government Motors in Kali, Fremont, Fisher Body, his Uncle was production manager.

He knew there was going be a war so he did the enlistment tour in 1940, got turned down by all, to many foot ball injuries. Enlisted in the Coasties, hey the Great Salt Lake has a station, spent the war casing Germans.

[Tax-chick]

My daughter is in the Coast Guard. Until recently, we had an ancient nun working in our parish who had been in the Coast Guard as a young woman in WW2. (She moved to her order’s nursing home a few months ago.)

This gentleman (link below) worked in real estate with my mother in Virginia Beach in the 1980s. He joined the RAF, through Canada, because he was determined to fight before the US got into WW2. I don’t know what drives people like that, but some people, like my daughter, have a very combative spirit.

http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-wing-cdr-joe-mccarthy-1177771.html

[Verginius Rufus]

Maybe he happened to be in Newfoundland when the war started? Or there was something more attractive about the British army?

PEI is one of two provinces I haven't visited--the other is Saskatchewan.

[Little Bill]

To tone down his views, when he was in France, Limey Tea was like acid, the meat was from Monkeys, Bully Beef = Monkey Meat.

[nathanbedford]

Some, like Churchill, participate in foreign adventures in Afghanistan, Cuba, and the Sudan out of ambition. Some, like Hemingway, participate in the Spanish Civil War out of idealism. Much the same can be said of Americans who flew in Lafayette-Esquadrille in World War I or with the flying Tigers in World War II.

Some serve in the Foreign Legion because they're on the run from the law and others because they are on the run from themselves. Some serve in foreign wars as mercenaries out of greed or because they know nothing else.

Some are compelled to serve in foreign adventures because, quite simply, they are forced to do so by the draft. Others out of poverty.

But it is not the motivation that gets them there which is intriguing, it is what compels them to behave the way they do once they are there.

[Clive]

-

[SunkenCiv]

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