Though I never knew him, my grandfather, Jack Parks Ensor, was a military man. He retired from Her Majesty’s service a light colonel, and he himself orchestrated many campaigns and played a very important role in the second world war. My dad has all the history books, and has told me all the stories about the man for whom I am a namesake.
Every November 11, Rememberance day, was a big day for my dad. We’d go to the community centre or the Catholic Church or some other venue and watch as the Legionaires would march in slowly with reefs of poppies, and crosses of rememberance. Some of the retired men carried their colours, others just carried tears for men they’d lost in Italy, Poland, Germany and other stages where we fought. We fought.
It seems easy for historians to say that “we” fought a war. I suppose that identifying ourselves as one of them is the only way to preserve our history as a country. But every year that my dad took me to a Rememberance day service, the numbers of veterans was smaller. They fought the war. The war ended in 1945, and I reckon that the oldest to survive couldn’t have been much younger than twenty, being replacements for those who fell ahead of them. Survivors now are pushing ninety, and surely many of their minds and memories are waning, just as their bodies are failing. In just a decade, all those who fought in the last world war will be gone, and we will remain.
I’ve never fought in a war and I don’t know many people who have. A handful of my friends are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, and I’m sitting in a hotel in Fresno, complaining because there’s no grocery store close by.
No one knows for sure how many people died in WWII. Conservative estimates range from 50 million to other guesses upwards of 70 million. Million. If you think about that, that’s the current population of Canada wiped out twice over. That’s one quarter of the US population. Those were all people with hearts, and dreams, and fears and girlfriends, and love, and tears. Each one of them had a mother who birthed them, and loved them and prayed for them. Each one hoped they’d live. They didn’t.
I never fought, and I hope I never have to; and as for you, I wish the same. Remember the wars gone by. Remember the hearts broken as telegraphs came in saying that our loved ones were killed in action or missing or taken prisoner.
They fought the war. We remember.
