Nearly 400 thousand Canadians enlisted for that war, and 67 thousand were killed, including 39 year old Lance Corporal HG Bellinger, with the PPCLI. He was our country's first military death on January 8, 1915 near Ypres.
In World War II, more than 44 thousand more Canadians laid down their lives for us. Another 500 died in Korea, and lets not forget the 158 service personnel who died in Afghanistan.
But it's not just the dead we should pause and remember. It's the veterans as well. Men like my father. Dad was in the Queens Own 2nd, and enlisted in Claresholm, Alberta in late 1943. When he was just 18. He went overseas in 1944, and landed in France several weeks after the D-Day invasion.
He was also one of the thousands and thousands of boys who was wounded in action, hit in the face as he walked own a road in France. Dad had 9 corrective surgeries on his nose, and was blind for 6 weeks after. He was 19 at the time. He also said he was lucky, because the chap behind him was killed.
He also, with the exception of one time, never talked about the war and what he went through. But he got the chance to do what so many vets never did: He went back.
It was after he watched a show on the invasion, and saw the road he was on when he was wounded. So, in 1984, 40 years afterward, he and Mom went to England and France. Not only did they visit the training ground Dad was at at Aldershot, but he made a point of going to France, finding that road and marched, not walked, down it to what his objective would have been that August 1n 1944.
And thats just one of thousands of stories told and untold by veterans. And that's why we should all pause and remember on November 11th.
I know I will. And I'll be wearing a red poppy.
TTFN
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