~Survivors!~

~Survivors!~

Part 1 of a True Story Documentary

of my family biography, starting with my Grand-parents

and reaching back to their Grand-Parents!

I look forward to when I can finally add some more!

Thank-You & Enjoy!

Commonwealth

Coat of arms!

Oh, there once was a Swagman

Camped in the billabong

Under the shade of a coolibah tree,

And he sang as he looked at his old billy boiling

Who’ll come a - Waltzing Matilda with me?

Forgetting that spoons stir hot liquids much better,

The Swagman immersed his tool in his tea

And he sighed as he spied his old billy boiling

Now I can’t bugger you,

So will you bugger me?

Matilda: Although there are several schools of thought, Matilda as originally used is of Teutonic origins and means Mighty Battle Maiden, referring to the women in camps during the Thirty-Year Wars in Europe. Later this more commonly referred to the great army coats or blankets that soldiers rolled into a swag and tossed over their shoulders while marching.

* * * * *

My great grandfather on my mothers’ side was in World War 1. At some point during his time at war many of the soldiers were given water that was poisoned and most of the ones that drank it, died! My great grandfather survived… but spent the rest of his life extremely ill. He lived until my grandmother was 14, leaving behind a wife and 7 children. World war 2 saw both my grandparents in it, and this is their story.

My Grand-mother who was born in Heechum England on March 24/1924, at 18 was not given a choice, she was drafted in to the war. She joined the air force and earned her title as a Corporal. My grandfather born in Alberta on October 29/1916 and him and his two brothers enlisted voluntarily in the Canadian Army and went through general boot camp where the three started out as privates. While in boot camp they were the camps entertainment (something like Cirque de Soleil) they were acrobats. After boot camp they were given extra training learning how to parachute, their obvious flexibility playing a major factor. Somewhere in there my grandfather was commissioned for further training and separated from his brothers. He was taught to ride a motorcycle and given special instructions on what his job would be.

Both my grandparents were stationed in Egypt when they met. My grandfathers’ job was to deliver messages to the General on the front line carrying the instructions on how to attack the enemy. Riding his bike through dangerous territories never knowing if each trip would be his last, would eventually give him a write up in a Penticton Newspaper in the forties, where it spoke well of how he made ‘good’ in the war for the job he was chosen to do. While at war on one rainy day his bike ran out of gas just outside where the British were stationed. The Brits were less than co-operative, making fun of him saying, “Ah look at that stupid Canadian” and wouldn’t help.

My grandmother on her own went out into the rain and helped him to fuel his bike. The purpose of the British army in Egypt at the time was to keep the Germans away from the Suez Canal, to stop the export/ import of products. My Grandmothers stellar strength to walk away from her comrades’ banter and more would eventually be the reason why I am alive today.

One day my grandmother entered the barracks where she was staying and went into the bathroom, she looked in the garbage can and saw a newborn baby, murdered, she took the lifeless body to the authorities, where an investigation was done, and the woman guilty was charged. This was apparently a trend but lucky for my grandmother she never had to witness it again. Unwed mothers were something to be ashamed of during those times, and then adding factors like woman who were married but separated from their husbands, added additional complications while at war. Needless to say my grandmother stopped looking in garbage cans, and never had to witness something like that again. But what happened next was worse.

My grandmother as earlier mentioned not influenced by the attitudes of those around her, spent much of her time taking walks on her own when she was at ease. She was told numerous times that it was dangerous and that she should stay on the campgrounds. One day she returned from one of those walks and saw that the natives of that land had stuck tree poles through the door handles of the Women’s barracks where she stayed and had set the tent on fire. She stood there alone and aghast from a distance as she heard the screaming deaths of those women, she was the only one to survive; ‘I guess those walks weren’t so dangerous after all!’ She served for 6 years and when the war was over she was honorably discharged because of what she had witnessed and survived through while serving out the rest of her time at war!

Back home in England, my grandmother made the decision that she didn’t want to have anything to do with the British snobbery that surrounded her and told her mother that she wanted to immigrate to Canada. Back then there were certain traditions my Great grandmother was proud and insistent on following.

No virgin daughter of hers would be taking such a trip alone. So my Great grandmother paid the way for the both of them to Canada. Following the procedures for immigrating back then, there boat eventually arrived in Halifax but the final destination was some distance yet, Edmonton would be where my Grandmother would make her life here in Canada her first home. My Great grandmother eventually went back to England but not before seeing my grandmothers’ future unfold before her eyes.

On a nice random evening new to Canada there was a local dance being held, (my guess is that it was held at the local legion, that’s where everybody who was somebody that was connected to the War went) and so the two of them (Mother & Daughter) went. They were having a pleasant evening, when at some point the dance floor suddenly opened up and the crowd disbursed and there on the other side of the room was a Man she never had any other contact with again, nor did she ever know if she would get to see him again? But her search for true love and faith in God that she’d find it (true love), brought her to Canada, and there on this day and at this time… it was the man whose motorcycle she helped to fill with gas in the middle of the pouring rain, while stationed in Egypt!

Within a year this man would become my grandfather, they were married in May of 1949, and together they would eventually have 2 sons and a daughter. Through my Mother I am the only grandchild from that marriage. The trauma of the damage done to both my grandparents during the war left permanent scars on both of them. Through the years of their marriage my grandmother had three mental breakdowns, and never quite lived in our world of sanity again.

They both drank and smoked for a period of time my grandfather being the larger drinker, like many other war traumatized families this would eventually be the largest factor used (in her mind) as the major contributor to the end of their marriage. The post - traumatic stress disorder that caused chaos and fighting during their marriage, and the war like rationing that lived within their minds, caused a pattern of static in communication that in some way still lives on in my family today.

The damage of the trauma’s suffered by both of them was too much for the love that they did have for their marriage to last, and so like many other families who suffered similar consequences the endings are similar or the same. And that is where the inspiration for the poem I wrote comes from. My Uncles blamed my Grandfather, while I saw the faultlessness for both of them because of what world 1 was more at fault for over the damage done to my grandmother and then adding on to that World War 2 for the both of them. My Uncles never forgave him though they were given enough time. He never spoke with 1 of them after the divorce ever again rendering no peace between him and his sons before his death. My Grandmother’s mental health issues made things worse than they had to be between him and his children, so as faultless as I understand it from the damaged caused by war, I did know her well enough and long enough to understand that she was not innocent in the ways and actions of what took thought and planning to say and do to cause the rift that remained permanent for my Grandfather until his death!

In the end my grandfather left behind 5 wives, 3 sons and a daughter ... And alcoholism and abuse are just two of the things among other factors that has left the silence of the wall that is shared between many families and not just my own of people who’ve survived both of those wars. My mother was the reason why I got to see him two times in my childhood, once he came to visit us, and once when she took me to visit him. As a young adult and when I first moved to Vancouver (at 19) I went to visit him on my own. It was sad watching him struggle with Parkinson’s and the way the whole family behaved emotionally than and still do today. He passed away in Victoria B.C. The only thing he wanted to see was that I would find a life and some happiness of my own. When he received a picture of me as a Newlywed and a Mother of one little girl (his great granddaughter) who I named Destiny, though never getting to meet her, he sighed with relief and said, ‘With that I am satisfied,” before leaving this world in his sleep.

My Grandmother eventually starved to death refusing to eat, her will to live just gave out one day. Official diagnosis on her death certificate I was told was simply (dementia) very accurate for the way she had to live through 2 world wars mentally, she honestly never had the opportunity, freedom or choice to be a child. She had to work at a very young age helping to care for and tend to the needs of the guests her Mother had in the bed & breakfast she ran from their home when her father was at war. From this humble beginning in her life however one thing did bloom for certain within her heart of hearts, she was not racist because she knew at 7 yrs of age what it was like to live and work and be treated like a slave. A lesson she never forgot in her entire life. And that lesson is what blessed her to be the wife of my grandpa, allowing my life to come to this world and write this story for them, not just for me! I alone was by her side for as many of those days as I could be, but my love for her was not enough to get her to fight a little harder by eating more to live a little longer for me because “I” still needed her. She too passed away in her sleep alone in a hospital bed in Winnipeg… No-one was by her side.

I was left with a quiet disgust for my version of witnessing the British silence, emotional stubbornness and lastly refusal of communication, in viewing the three generations and watching the next one come into this world without making amends and finding a peace everyone could have lived their lives better with as they too leave this world someday. I just Know from what I witnessed I won’t do that and so I write these words and take on the mission of promising to produce a documentary and film that can be shared and passed on too many generations, a story told that is of value to people in 3 different Countries, of which here in these pages thus far only 2 have been mentioned! But I promise the rest will join these pages some day very soon!

The damage and the understanding the hurt did to me as I watched them both leave this world the way they did. My Grandmother left this world married to my Grandfather in her heart, (this I witnessed through her mental health pain) she loved him, she never re-married and new he was her husband. She was buried in a veteran’s cemetery as the one thing that her right earned her.

~ For my Grandparents ~

And all the Veterans on this

and all remembrance Days!

Looking in their eyes

and understanding what I’d seen

the veterans that they were

Scarred from the wars before me,

Never coming back from the damage ‘they’ did see

Looking in their eyes

understanding what I’d seen

the family that was lost

from the distance those wars cost,

Grandparents hard to love

because of the high cost

The difference of our worlds

from the state of point of view,

The poppies that I see

Hurts the love inside of me

For the people that I lost

who were way too old to see;

the limit of their love

towards the grand-daughter in me,

I lifted them on high

For what it is they meant to me,

When they looked inside my eyes

It was that love they didn’t see

When I was growing up around

the silence of disease,

The damage those wars cost for so many families

As I wipe away the tears;

for the words they’ll never hear

as I remember my love for them

Through the eyes of innocents,

And remember what they shared

And who I fight to be from here,

For looking in their eyes

and understanding what I’d seen

the veterans that they were

from the wars before me,

the families that were lost

from the distance those wars cost,

As I learn to say good-bye

Knowing what their love did cost

While still inside remember

What it is they meant to me,

from the distance of our Worlds

and the states of point of view

and how the poppies that I see

will always hurt,

the little girl inside of me!

I LOVE YOU GRANDPA,

Your Granddaughter Forever

Jennifer!