What Remembrance Day Means To Me

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My Dad's formal education ended just before he finished the eighth grade because that day Nazi German troops poured across the Dutch border. Six days later the Netherlands surrendered and he and my Mom were now teenagers growing up in an occupied country. They got to work alongside my grandparents at that point as full-time farmers. I'm sure it wasn't so bad, to begin with. By the time the Netherlands was liberated though. My Dad's family built a room underneath the manure pile so the men folk could hide when the Germans came by looking for able-bodied men to work in the factories in Germany. They were fortunate though because in some parts of Holland the people were starving. They at least had enough food to survive. My wife's uncle Tommy was one of the men Canada sent to fight and was part of the liberating army. I never got to meet him because he passed away from cancer. I did have the honour of meeting and talking with his widow. My parents had deep respect for my wife's family once they knew about this. That grew deeper when I talked about what I had learned. Tommy served in a heavy reconnaissance unit that first served in North Africa, then Italy, and finally the Netherlands. My dad knew instantly which unit that was and this was sacred to him. Ninety-nine men from that unit fought in a battle where they suffered ninety-seven casualties. They fought in several other bloody battles before the war was over. When I was ten years old my family visited the Netherlands. I quite vividly remember one battlefield my parents took us to. It's near Nijmegen. They have battle-scarred allied equipment on display and a small museum. Allied troops marched across an open field there in the teeth of enemy fire and Tommy was one of those soldiers. Tommy suffered some PTSD for the rest of his life. He could not stay in the house when his wife was vacuuming the floor. The sound reminded him of incoming German artillery. My mother-in-law was so happy when her big brother returned from the war. He was dreadfully skinny so they had to fatten him back up though. I don't think he ever told anyone. Many Canadian soldiers gave a lot of their rations to Dutch families because they couldn't bear to see the children starve. Tommy was a true hero. Lest we forget.