Grandpa & the War

Jun 6

My grandfather died two days before my fifth birthday. He was 77.

Grandpa didn’t talk about the war. Not that it’s something you really talk to a 4 year old about. But I did know that was why we had to yell at him. He had lost nearly all his hearing from gunfire. It never stopped him from having a big smile on his face.

When I was 16 I moved to France on an exchange student program. As luck would have it I was assigned to the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region. We hadn’t covered the World Wars in history class and I regret not having fully appreciated where I was.

It seemed like every French person wanted to take me to different war memorials. I visited beaches in Dieppe and Dunkirk. Toured a secret bunker Hitler was building called La Coupole. Walked rows of headstones in a Canadian cemetery. I even had a chance to go through the underground tunnels of Vimy Ridge. And at every turn I was greeted by French people telling me how much they loved Canadians, how grateful they were for what we did.

I don’t know if my grandfather was involved in D-Day, but it’s likely. Most everything my father and I know about his involvement with WWII is tucked away into a wooden box. We know he joined in ‘42 at the age of thirty one. The same age I am now. That he was a certified truck mechanic at one point. And he was stationed in England. The records end in 1946.

These are his medals. We don’t know what they are for.

My father is sure that grandpa had PTSD, not that they diagnosed it back then. He once said that his friends were killed all around him yet he survived. The rest of his life he had nightmares and had to sleep alone. But he didn’t let it get in the way of his life. He loved and laughed and enjoyed it all. He went out of his way to help strangers and people down on their luck he often ran into at his job with the railway.

It’s the 70th anniversary of D-Day today and I imagine there are a lot of people out there who share this story. They aren’t really sure what their grandparents experience was. The memories have died with them. What’s left is a box of pieces they know to be important without understanding how they came to be.