Rockin' On: London Daily Photo

When I moved to London, I lived in an area once known as Petersville. It was a suburb of London built on the low lying land across the Thames River from London proper.

When I went for a walk about the neighbourhood I would cross the North Branch of the Thames River at the Blackfriars Bridge. Above the large wrought iron span, overlooking the Petersville and Blackfriars neighbourhoods, there was a large and somewhat rundown looking white home with massive columns gracing the front.

I have since learned that the magnificent home was designed by a local architect, William Robinson, and it originally presented a less grandiose appearance. The massive columns were added before the home was donated to the Roman Catholic Church to be used as the new Bishop's Residence.

Reportedly, the donor, John Donally of Buffalo, New York, didn't find the original Italianate look regal enough for the bishops of London.

When last I looked, thanks to some creative thinking, the old home had been converted into four condominiums and the structure promised to be around for many years to come.

A chap with whom I once worked, he was an editor at the local paper, wrote the following piece to mark Remembrance Day. Earlier, I reposted it on my Facebook page and many of my friends and relatives thought the former editor struck just the right note. Many of my older followers also lost relatives and family friends while off fighting in a far away war.

This evening, looking at the setting sun, one massive jet trail made me think of the essay I've reposted. For me, the jet trail symbolized how many, far too many, airmen fell from the sky, plane aflame, to become just one more dead airman among thousands.

So I am reposting his essay here in hopes than even more people will read it and reflect on the significance of today, Remembrance Day. I fear that as the years pass, our memories of the horror of war are fading. And that is also sad.

From the Geezers' Newsletter 4: An essay by Bill Jory

“Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.”

– Herbert Hoover

Is there an echo in the room? Sounds like it. Is there something reminiscent about this week’s offering? I believe so. Is this déjà vu all over again. Definitely. Long-time readers may remember this column from a few years back. I’ve decided to recycle it to honour of Remembrance Day this Thursday and for new subscribers who didn’t see it last time. Read on:

I have been one of the fortunate ones. War has never come knocking on my door.

As a baby boomer born after the hostilities of the Second World, my life has been one of peace and privilege. My generation never saw the face of armed conflict.

Sure, in our youth we learned the history in school, watched the propaganda films that glorified battle on TV, heard veterans talk quietly of their experiences and were reminded of the sacrifices at annual Nov. 11 ceremonies. But, and it’s a big but, my generation never had to confront war’s realities on a personal level.

The prospect of waking up one day and finding out a friend or loved one was no longer here simply because the nation was at war is something we never faced. We hardly ever thought about the grief and suffering that had come just a few years before we were born.

Our parents and grandparents, no doubt thinking it was for the best, protected us from the horrors they had lived through. Probably there seemed little point in reviving old pains and inflicting them on the next generation. My father, for example, never even bothered to collect his war medals. He wanted to forget that time and he hardly ever talked about it.

This Remembrance Day, though, I am trying to put a face on war. It’s the face of an uncle whose name I bear – William Jory. Some people I’ve encountered over the years say I am like him. I don’t know. I never met him. He was killed four years before I was born when his RCAF Lancaster bomber was shot down by a German night fighter during the Second World War.

From my earlier days, though, I recognized that his loss had devastated my father’s family. My grandmother hardly ever left her home after his death and my aunts would suddenly become tearful if – in childish curiosity – I asked about the uncle whose photos haunted the house. It seemed best to avoid the subject. Until now.

When the last of my father’s sisters died a few years back, she left me a touching and fascinating legacy – a scrapbook detailing my uncle’s life of 24 years. Perusing its pages, I came face to face with the overwhelming price of war. A life snuffed out before it had a chance to flower. A family left in sadness until the last survivor died. A beautiful young woman robbed of the fellow who was born to be her husband. A community deprived of one of its most promising young men.

The book begins innocently enough: routine pictures with parents, older siblings, grandparents. It progresses through a happy childhood of excelling in athletics, being a popular lad about town, taking part in the usual teenage activities and receiving affectionate notes from a special girl named Peggy.

Then suddenly there is jarring change. The photos show men in uniform. Telegrams arrive congratulating Bill on getting his wings and becoming a flying officer. Another comes confirming safe arrival in England.

Whatever hopes, thoughts or anguish the family harbored remain a secret.

But the worst fears came home to rest with a cold, informal telegram on Oct. 19, 1944:

“Regret to advise that your son, Flying Officer William Edward Jory – J22936 – is reported missing after air operation overseas October sixteenth.”

Still, faint hope was offered. The next day, his commanding officer wrote: “While it would be as wrong for me to raise false hope as it would be to give you the impression that you should definitely conclude that your son is no longer alive, I ought to tell you that there is always the possibility that he may be a prisoner of war.”

Squadron Leader F. R. Anderson would write four days later: “It is our hope that some happier report may yet come back to his squadron in the not-too-distant future.”

Chills run up my spine thinking of the sleepless nights, the fears and worries that must have tormented the family in the days ahead. Emotions must have run from optimism to pessimism with terrifying regularity.

Perhaps not knowing is more stressful than facing the worst news. Who knows? But I suspect few things could be more heartbreaking than the telegram of Jan. 12, 1945: “Regret to advise International Red Cross quoting German information states your son, Flying Officer William Edward Jory, lost his life but does not give additional particulars...”

After the war, gruesome particulars would be learned. The plane crashed on the evening of Oct. 15-16, 1944, on the farm of Holfer Christiansen, near the village of Idum in northwest Denmark. The crew of seven was killed.

In later years, my father would travel to Denmark and befriend Christiansen and his wife. They would become fast friends and Mrs. Christiansen would tell my father the real story of what happened that night. Her tale of courage makes the blood run cold even today.

She was at home alone with her small children because her husband, a member of the Danish resistance movement, was hiding outside the country with a Nazi death sentence on his head. She had just gone to bed when she heard the sound of a sputtering aircraft engine.

Recognizing all was not well, she ran outside just in time to see the aircraft crash a short distance from her home. Rushing to the scene, she found the entire crew dead.

She thought quickly and decided to take precautions for after the war. From each body she took a piece of identification so she could write to the families and tell them exactly what had happened. These she buried under her house.

Nazi troops arrived soon after, seized the bodies and refused requests from the Danish people to give the airman a proper funeral in the church cemetery. Instead, they buried them in an unmarked grave in a field. But Mrs. Christiansen had ventured into the night and followed the Nazis. She knew where the bodies were hidden.

Though the Danes were ordered not to put flowers there or go near the site, they did so anyway. Before long, shrubs were planted and each day fresh-cut flowers were placed there. After the war, the bodies were exhumed and given a hero’s Christian burial in the tiny nearby churchyard.

What tears my heart apart to this day is that my uncle’s story is not unique. In all, 41,700 members of the Canadian military were dead or missing at war’s end. We will honour their valour and sacrifice by wearing a poppy and with two minutes of silence at 11 a.m. next Thursday. Yet I can’t help thinking about those left behind to live with the grief. Imagine the suffering and sorrow of my family multiplied by 41,700. Add to that all war and all nations. The pain seems incomprehensible.