Wednesday, November 6, 2024

They Gave All They Had

The Eleventh Hour

 It is time, once again, to remember that for those things worthwhile, such as the safety and security of our loved ones and  descendants, it is often necessary to work and fight right to the Eleventh hour of the Eleventh day of the Eleventh month.

Here is a story and a poem, both of which  I've posted before on Remembrance Day and are also included in my short story collection "People of the West: A short story timeline". You can find a link to that by clicking on the right half of a picture of me on the right side of the screen. The collection is also available as an audio  (narrated by the author, which, surprise, surprise, is me) which you can download to your phone, tablet or computer and listen to while your working, driving down the road or simply laying in the sun.

The Battle of Britain story is my rendering of the story originally related to me by the main character whose name was mot Harry Burnside.

The poem is something I created from a story Francis Beaton Junior told me when we worked on the Penalty Ranch or Half Diamon D 4 in 1964. He related how he and several other aboriginal young men, either Cree, Beaver, Salteaux or Métis met in Grande Prairie, Alberta, in 1914, went to Edmonton and signed up for the Royal Canadian Army and went to Europe. Frank wasn't sure but he thought he might have been the only one that returned.

Deacon

By D.M. McGowan

 

 

 

Before men started shooting at him with 7.92 mm bullets Harry Burnside had been a singer. He stood in front of fifteen, twenty and sometimes thirty-man orchestras and sang the Dorsey, Kenton, or Ellington songs or whatever else the crowd in front and the band behind wanted to hear. He had worked his magic in Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and his home town, Windsor, Ontario. Harry thought it was only right to use his natural talent, his voice, to make at least part of his living. It had also been a great way to start a young life and learn the music and entertainment business from professionals. It was only incidental that it was the perfect place for a teenager to learn from the masters how to party.

Sometimes horrendous events are necessary to save a young man from himself. In Harry’s case it was the war in Europe that brought a young man’s party life to a close, at least temporarily. Of course it also accelerated the danger in that life.

Not that Harry rushed to a recruiting station in the autumn of 1939. Some of his young friends and even the older men he worked with certainly did. It was one of the older musicians who convinced him signing up for service was the thing to do.

“Folks ‘r sayin’ this here war is gonna be over in no time,” Marvin, a trumpet player said. “They is sorely mistaken. I bin readin’ up on these here Germans an’ they got ‘em an army. British ain’t got nothin’ an’ they’s gonna get whacked.”

“Are you suggesting we Canadian boys should go over there and get whacked, as you say, right along with them?” Harry asked.

“First off, I ain’t a Canuk, I’m a southern boy,” Marvin said. “Second, when things get tough they’ll be comin’ for us anyway. Might as well sign up for somethin’ you want t’ do instead o’ somethin’ the government thinks you’d be good at.”

“You’re country isn’t in it,” Harry pointed out.

“Not yet,” Marvin responded. “Now, you’ve been workin’ here an’ there along with singin’. I don’t got no income but my trumpet. A man signs up he’ll get three squares a day an’ a cot.”

Harry took a drink of his whiskey and water and cast his gaze around the musicians gathered in the late night or, to those who were not musicians, early morning booze hall.

“You know, Marv, I’ve always wanted to learn to fly a plane,” Harry said.

Marvin clapped him on the shoulder. “Now you’re talkin’, boy. Royal Canadian Air Force. What say we go sign up first thing in the mornin’?”

Harry looked at his watch. “Might I suggest early this afternoon? I might be awake by then.”

 

Somewhere between Windsor, Ontario and Ashford, Kent, Harry lost touch with Marvin, but not with men from the southern States. Almost half the men stationed on the airfield were Americans who had travelled north to Canada and signed on with the RCAF.

Though they wore Canadian uniforms and insignia they were technically in Royal Air Force squadrons. Their squadron commander was a British major, and Harry’s wing commander a Canadian Lieutenant or “Leftenant” as the British officers insisted. The other two Canadian pilots presently assigned to their understaffed wing were actually from Arkansas. In the two man barracks enjoyed by RAF pilots one of those southerners, Otis Tyler was Harry’s bunk mate.

“Ah hear we all getting’ new radios next month,” Otis said as the two pilots walked down the hall one early morning in late August.

Harry shrugged with one shoulder as he held the door open with the other hand and let Otis out into the humid dawn. “Be fine if they’re better than the T9. But if they aren’t, well, I’m starting to get used to being up there all by myself.”

“Mighty handy fur tellin’ somebody where you’s ‘bout t’ crash,” Otis noted.

“As long as they work and you’re no more than a mile away” Harry countered. “The T9 is good for about that far. You’re probably better off depending on a farmer seeing you go down.”

Otis chuckled.

As they approached the mess hall their wing leader, Lieutenant Mapes reached the door and opened it for them.

“Good news chaps,” the officer said as the two non-coms passed through the door he held open for them. “Just spoke with the CO. We stand down today.”

“Excellent!” Harry said. “Now I can have some real breakfast and more than one cup of coffee.”

“Yuh all worry too much ‘bout that coffee thing,” Otis said.

“Quite good policy,” the Lieutenant said.

“Nothin’ to it,” Otis responded. “Yuh all just take an empty cola bottle up with yuh.”

“I say, old boy, a bit hard to pee in a bottle when one is trying to avoid the 109 that is glued to your tail. Not to mention that bottle flying around loose in the cockpit.”

“Yuh all make sure yuh strap it in so it don’ fly ‘round,” Otis said. “As fur takin’ a leak when Gerry’s on muh tail an fillin’ my magic carpet full o’ holes, why ‘bout then I don’ have no trouble passin’ water.”

Lieutenant Mapes laughed. Harry grinned and shook his head in resignation.

“Since we aren’t going up to be shot at, perhaps we could talk about something else?” Harry suggested.

“Our Calm Colonial boy is right once again,” Mapes said. “We have a day to repair gear.”

“And talk about new radios,” Harry suggested.

“There isn’t anything to talk about,” Mapes said. “I’ve heard the same rumours as you men. However, I haven’t heard anything from the Old Man and I haven’t seen any radios. Other than the 9 in my Spit that quit working entirely the last time I was up.”

 

Later that day, Otis asked Harry to join him and some other airmen to study and review the local ladies and pubs. However, Harry had grown out of the need to wake up with a pounding hangover. He had already had years of partying. Besides, bringing in bullet scarred Spitfires had made the drinking bouts seem very unimportant. His mates, often a year younger or more, still asked him even though he seldom went with them.

An hour after the other pilots had gone into town Harry walked off the base and caught a ride into Ashford. He walked the streets for awhile admiring the buildings and the history.

Occasionally a Junkers 88 would fly across the English Channel very close to the water, start a steep climb to miss the Cliffs of Dover and release a bomb mounted to its belly at the end of that climb. The speed of the bomber combined with the force of the climb would cast that bomb for a very long way and it would land wherever the laws of physics, geology, and aerodynamics might decide and no man could say. On that beautiful day in late August, 1940 a building Harry had admired moments before and at that moment was no more than a block and a half away, disappeared in a cloud of dust, smoke and noise.

Harry Burnside had been flying over Britain for three months. He had been as far as France on a half dozen occasions. He had no idea how many dog fights he had been in but had shot down three Me 109s and crash landed twice. He had landed successfully in Spitfires that probably should have quit flying several minutes before. He had been scared out of his mind on those occasions but had worked his way through it.

That day, on the streets of Ashford, after the completely random bombing of a very historic building, Harry Burnside could not control the choking fear.

Looking around he saw the sign for a pub, the Anvil and Hammer. He stepped through the door and saw ale glasses stacked on the bar. He turned the pint glass over and said to the barman, “Whiskey.”

The barman could see by the look on Harry’s face that discussion might be dangerous. He poured a shot into the ale glass.

“Fill it,” Harry ordered.

The inn keeper complied.

Harry downed the whiskey and noticed only in passing that it was smooth, a single malt.

          He put the glass back down on the bar and said, “Again.”

          Once it was full, he downed the second glass.

          He remembered opening the door to his barrack, but very little after that.

          Much later Otis Tyler returned to find his bunk mate, the man who usually refused to go drinking with his mates, passed out on the floor.

          “Burnside,” he said, as he picked Harry up and placed him on the bunk, “yuh all just like them travelin’ preachers back t’ home; Preachin’ hell fire an’ brimstone then next thing yuh got some farmer’s daughter out behind the tent.”

          And that is how Sergeant Pilot Harold Burnside became known as “Deacon.”

 

 Native Sons in World War One

By D.M. McGowan and K.L. McGowan

© 2018

 

Seventeen native boys left the Upper Peace

The only land they’d known, all in their teens.

They’d all grown up wild out among the trees.

Knew where to find pelts, beaver ponds or streams.

They hunted for their supper, trap or single shot

And only their mothers gave safety a fleeting thought

 

After two hundred years of Scott and Fleur de Lis

They knew some other talk, sometimes two or three,

English, French and German were spoken in the land,

And whatever tongue was spoken by their particular band

Some of them could read and write more than just their name

But the army didn’t care, green privates all the same

 

An amazing great adventure for young trapper men

From freedom of the wild to a Canadian Army pen

Across the land in trains, something never seen.

Mistreated by a Sergeant, but still bright and keen.

Dropped off in camps and marched around a square

“Dig some dirt from here and put it over there.”

 

On the trains again east to Canada’s Maritimes

March down to the docks in perfect double lines

Then up a gangplank to a big steel canoe

Then told to put their kit where you couldn’t fit a shoe

A dozen ships in convoy from the Bedford shore

But count on German U boats sinking two or more.

 

More camp time in England, weeks without the sun

Then finally sent to France to show them how it’s done

Trenches that collapse from rains that never end

Bodies on the wire or sprawled out in no man’s land.

All caked in mud, “Are they ours? Are they theirs?”

Days and weeks of boredom, then terror and despair.

 

 

Vimy Ridge, the Somme or maybe Regina Trench

Maybe English on the left other times the French

High Wood or Kitchener’s, Avion as well

With the Aussies at Gallipoli, some lived to tell

Passchendaele, Arras, knowing each the end

If not for the war, surely for the men

 

Métis, Cree and Dane a total of Seventeen

On a great adventure, young, naive and keen

But the Great War wasn’t a great place to learn

For seventeen go but only two returned.

 

 

 

 


Thursday, October 3, 2024

Why Would You Write That CRAP

 

       Why Would You Write That CRAP

Reconstructed Viking Longhouse 


I believe that the building of the Canada that exists today was as exciting as the building of any country in the world. Filled with explorers and builders who had the same human phobias, characteristics and destructive urges as people anywhere and at any time. And those pioneers in whatever field they happened to be pioneering, made some great advancements that in many cases are shared by peoples around the world to the benefit of all.

          However, the recording of, presentation of and acknowledgment of these inventions, developments or improvements by those pioneers are often underplayed and sometimes not acknowledged at all. Sometimes discoveries made by Canadians are attributed to peoples who had nothing to do with this development.

Fort Victoria, Colony of British Columbia, 1864

          In many cases this is the fault of those reporting their findings or those recording and presenting the history. Immigration, growth, construction and industrial developments are written in such a way as to be as exciting as watching grass grow.

Old Fort St. John in 1875
At St. John Post an earlier version of this post situated about a mile away, 3 Hudson's Bay employees where killed during a battle with Dane-zaa (Beaver) warriors in 1824
       

   Exciting? Certainly, it was!

          How many people died while rafting logs down the Ottawa River? For those who survived while poling those logs, it was as exciting as you could possibly get.

          The trappers who found themselves being threatened, assaulted and perhaps shot at by those who considered that particular area to be their trapping area(of ALL races) would have been very excited as would those who were trying to run them off.

          The hundreds of Chinese men who survived the construction of the railroad through the western mountains as dozens of their fellow workers died, would have been very excited by that survival.

Chinese immigrants entering BC

          With my stories I attempt first to entertain. Second, I try to show people building their own small piece of Canada. I try, whenever possible, to include in my stories, pieces of actual history in an attempt to show that it isn’t the history that is boring, it’s the presentation. I feel it’s a double bonus if I can tie two or more historical events together so that the reader can, without memorizing the date, realize the relationship of these developments. In “Homesteader: Finding Sharon” for example, I’ve tried to link the timing of the completion of the railroad to the Crown Land Homestead Act and the beginning of Western agriculture, along with the contributions made by immigrates from south of the border.

Here are some of the items of Canadian development mentioned in specific stories.

Packtrain in Revelstoke 1890


“The Great Liquor War”

Available entertainment --- A prize fight in the town of Rossland

The development of Canadian law enforcement --- The British Columbia Provincial Police and the North West Mounted Police.

A few of the laws in existence in the early days that made the country possible.

The building and completion of the Canadian Pacific Railroad.

CPR workers driving their own "last spike" on the same day as the official ceremony but far to the East near Donald.


“Homesteader: Finding Sharon”

The Homestead Act

The impact of the CPR on Western growth

A small example of the crime the NWMP dealt with including murder and a stage hold-up.

The fact that items designed to be fair and equitable in Ottawa could be anything but, depending on how they were applied in the field.

The ranches of vast acreages  known as “combines” owned by absentee investors/landlords

The devastating winter of 1886/87 which marked the beginning of the end of open range.

 

The ranch of John Ware, undoubtedly the most famous of the black cowboys to settle in Southern Alberta

“Partners”        

The complete disregard for life and particularly indigenous life

The end of the era of the Bison

A small mention of the Blackfeet peoples

The “greatest scout of the west” Jerry Potts.

The “Manifest Destiny” temperament that existed in the southern neighbor

Fenian raids in Eastern Canada

The second British Columbia Policeman to killed on duty, Constable Jack Lawson and the apprehension of the man who shot him.

The town of Barkerville

 

Calgary, District of Alberta, North West Territories, 1885

“The Making of Jake McTavish”

How some became pioneers by accident.

The early Saint Lawrence Seaway

Commercial fishing on Lake Winipeg

Massive livestock deaths during the winter 1886/87

The clean-up of carcasses after that devastating winter.

The development of the small family ranch

The building of branch – line railroads

The policeman who just does enough to get by and the one who does the job

The early existence and lack of recognition of mental trauma

The development of firearms from “cap and ball” to cartridge.

The lack of security within immigration

Calgary, Province of Alberta, 2013


 

“Gunfighters, Thieves and Lawmen”

Some of the changes in rank designation, equipment, command structure and retirement possibilities within the North West Mounted Police.

Early recognition that a red serge coat isn’t bulletproof

The death of Almighty Voice, four Mounted Policemen and a civilian and the wounding of two more policemen and a civism

The building of branch – line railroads

The beginning of early telephone systems.

The shortage of police officers in an exploding population.

The development farm machinery

 

“Boundaries”

The beginnings of organized crime in Briitish Columbia

Valient attempts to police an area larger than the US states of Washington, Oregon and California with two dozen Provincial Policemen, some part time officers and volunteers including responsibilities ranging from mining and land registration to marriage licenses.

The building of the Mountain Section of the Canadian Pacific Railroad.

The importation of Asian workmen for railroad construction

The “off and on” connection and interaction between BC and the western US.

The shortage of employment opportunities for women

The shortage of trained nurses and teachers in BC

The non-existence of inspectors in the early BCPP

The need to make “short term” or “expedient” decisions when there is a shortage of manpower and space for criminal incarceration.

“People of the West: A short story timeline”

Each short story moves us through time from the 1790s to the 1960s. Within each story is a historic event relevant to that time. There are 9 short stories and 14 poems expressing an opinion or feeling or event.

Tuesday, September 24, 2024

What in Hell would make you think that?

 

IDF soldiers return to northern border

 

There seems to be a serious effort afoot in both Europe and North America to stop the sale of weapons to Israel.

Who is going to stop disrupters, haters and extremists in Iran, Somalia, India, North Korea and China from selling weapons to Hamas thugs, Hezbollah and other Palestinian terrorists?

Hezbollah missile system in Southern Lebanon


Has everyone forgotten that Palestine was a British creation, an attempt to maintain some control in the Middle East and ensure access to the Suez Canal? That Britain was forced by Jewish militants to relinquish control of the area to those it had been taken from centuries before?

That area never was Palestinian. It was British for a time – a very short time in relation to the history of the area – and those directing the British government at the time put some local tribes they thought they could control in charge. However, several years of insurgence, terrorism and strife from the people who had inhabited the area 2000 years earlier, the Jews, convinced them that the cost of maintaining the area under British control and maintaining easy access to their traditional trade routes for spices, drugs and silk was just too expensive. It didn’t help that those they thought were their puppets, the so-called Palestinians they had put in charge, where every bit as troublesome as the Israelis.

It also developed that the original settlers, the Jews, could look after the area better than the British did anyway.

Funeral for IDF soldier 

The State of Israel has proven over and over again that they can manage the area at least as well as any other government can in their area of control and in many cases much better than those other nations. They have also offered the interlopers, the tribes placed there by the British that call themselves Palestinian, an opportunity to participate in that governance.

What became of those attempts to communicate and recognize the needs of other parties?

The USA released Iranian monies which had been frozen and unavailable to Iran due to their terrorist activities. Iran uses that money to fund terrorists and thugs sighting the need to “support Islam”, actions for which, if the writings are to be believed, Mohamed would condemn the whole lot. Having been defeated a half dozen times, the “Palestinians”, or more accurately, Gaza Insurgents, attack Israel on a Holy Day, killing and kidnapping primarily non-combatants.

Japan was condemned for a similar sneak attack December 7th, 1941. Is it suddenly alright because Vladimir Putin did it to the Ukraine and then some ungrateful immigrants did it to Israel?

Refusing Israel access to weapons is the way to make the area safe? What in hell would make you think that?

Some things happening in the world can be upsetting. However, entertainment can go a long way to releasing the stress caused by events in the world. Some of that entertainment is available in audio at 

https://www.amazon.com/Audible-People-West-short-story-timeline-ebook/dp/B0CRLQZVK7?ref 

OR

https://www.amazon.com/Audible-Partners-David-M-McGowan-ebook/dp/B0CRN86F97/


Saturday, June 1, 2024

The Great Liquor War trailer on YouTube

 Grady MacTavish and the crew at MacWood Productions, with some background from Dawson Creek's "Walter Wright Pioneer Village" put together a book trailer for my oldest published novel and here it is. Grady wrote a narration script for me to read and I see it as a good production that explains the basics of the story.

The story/novel in question is "The Great Liquor War" but the sequel to it, "Homesteader: Finding Sharon" is also available as an audio.

I'm also recording "Partners" - should be available by mid-June and "Wester People: A Short Story Timeline", hopefully available by July 15, 2024.

I had this done to kick off the audio version. Yes, it is the oldest published novel, but it has only recently been released as an audio - narrated by the author. Apparently there are many listeners of audio novels out there including a bunch of commercial drivers, a group that I was part of for twenty two years before I retired.


Yes, I write novels, usually with some actual history within the pages, but the most important part of any story I write is entertainment.

Enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRSN9Ys3eJs 




Monday, May 13, 2024

Mister Spock, logic has died.

I can't get over anyone having the gall to make these claims and the stupidity of Canadians to suck this crap in.
It's no wonder people (well, 30% anyway) have been accepting the actions of the Federal Liberal party and voting for them. After listening to the twisted logic of Hamas Justine aTruedope might even sound logical.
The Palastinians launched a sneaky, no-warning attack on non-,military targets and killed a couple of thousand people and it's Israel's fault.
??????????
Where are the umpires?
Where is the Geneva Convention?

The world has come to know that the UN is an ineffective waste of money, but surely they can at least make some noise. 

Beam me up Mister Spock. Logic has died.

Tuesday, January 9, 2024

Introducing Audio Connections

 

         

 


          It’s been a couple of years now since I retired and I’ve been enjoying it. One of the ways of achieving that has been to keep busy and much of that business has been the recording of my stories.

          Why would I do that?

          The easiest answer would be that I write those stories so that people can be entertained and the addition of audio books widens the scope of those who can be entertained. Readers, yes, but now listeners.

          But it also goes back to the last 22 years of my so called “working life”.  At least 60% of that time was by myself and with little to occupy me but the pictures floating around in my imagination.

          Sure, those pictures sometimes turned into the start or perhaps a scene in one of my stories. Sometimes there was satellite radio or recorded music. But it would have been far easier and time would pass faster by hearing a story from someone else.

          That did happen. On at least a half dozen times I trained new drivers and the hours listening to their stories flew by.

          Now, with the various platforms available, my stories and my voice can be telling those stories while you’re driving, painting, cutting the grass or vacuuming the carpet. You can download them to your phone or perhaps to the sound system in your vehicle. You can also download them to your computer and with a “memory stick” or “USB drive” carry those stories around from vehicle to vehicle.

          Yes, I have some satisfying responses to the printed and digital stories I have out there. But I also know there are those who don’t think they can take the time to read a book, even those who need to do so. With and audio book, you can have the entertainment, make those “robotic” times more satisfying and the days more rewarding.

          “The Great Liquor War”, my first published novel and now my first published audio book is available at audio.com. It, and most others that I’ve looked at have samples on the “buy” page so you have an idea to what you could be listening. In the case of GLW it is chapter 19 where the NWMP and BC Police with some volunteers attempt to stop a train/payroll robbery.

Click on the link and it'll take you right to that sample.

https://www.audible.ca/pd/The-Great-Liquor-War-Audiobook/B0CK3W5HJD?eac_link=ur1bBnmZI3Yz&ref=web_search_eac_asin_1&eac_selected_type=asin&eac_selected=B0CK3W5HJD&qid=VS0rHUkjoh&eac_id=138-2064358-3015852_VS0rHUkjoh&sr=1-1 

          Most of my readers will know that there is a sequel to “The Great Liquor War” entitled “Homesteader: Finding Sharon” which is what I am recording now.

          In the early fifties I remember my great grandmother McGowan leading me over to a big floor radio and a fifteen minute or half hour story, often the serialization of a novel. Some of those stories went into full production with sound effects and a large cast of actors and others were simply narrations. So far, my stories are narrations by the author --- which would be me.

          I’ve noticed, as have others, that my reading/voicing one of my stories can supply a whole new feeling.

          Eventually I hope to have all my stories available in audio versions.

There's an author page right here and another at Amazon.ca/author/dmmcgowan 


Thursday, November 2, 2023

Remembrance Day 2023

 

          Remembrance Day is back around again and, as with most times each year, it isn’t hard to understand the admonition that “If we don’t make a point of remembering this foolishness, we’ll do it again.”

          Why?

          Because we’re well on the way to doing it again. Israel, Gaza and Ukrainian certainly but attacks on humans because of religion, skin color, political persuasion or some other excuse to cover the fact that the attacker can’t think for himself.

          Enough of that for now; enjoy the story.

          Bye the way, this story and poem are about to be re-released in “People of the West: A short story timeline,” on Amazon, probably by end of November.

 

Deacon

By D.M. McGowan

         Before men started shooting at him with 7.92 mm bullets from their Bf 109s Harry Burnside had been a singer. He stood in front of fifteen, twenty and sometimes thirty-man orchestras and sang the Dorsey, Kenton, or Ellington songs or whatever else the crowd in front and the band behind wanted to hear. He had worked his magic in Detroit, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Cincinnati and his home town, Windsor, Ontario. Harry thought it was only right to use his natural talent, his voice, to make at least part of his living. It had also been a great way to start a young life and learn the music and entertainment business from professionals. It was only incidental that it was the perfect place for a teenager to learn from the masters how to party.

Sometimes horrendous events are necessary to save a young man from himself. In Harry’s case it was the war in Europe that brought a young man’s party life to a close, at least temporarily. Of course, it also accelerated the danger in that life.

Not that Harry rushed to a recruiting station in the autumn of 1939. Some of his young friends and even the older men he worked with certainly did. It was one of the older musicians who convinced him signing up for service was the thing to do.

“Folks ‘r sayin’ this here war is gonna be over in no time,” Marvin, a trumpet player said. “They is sorely mistaken. I bin readin’ up on these here Germans an’ they got ‘em an army. British ain’t got nothin’ an’ they’s gonna get whacked.”

“Are you suggesting we Canadian boys should go over there and get whacked, as you say, right along with them?” Harry asked.

“First off, I ain’t a Canuk, I’m a southern boy,” Marvin said. “Second, when things get tough, they’ll be comin’ for us anyway. Might as well sign up for somethin’ you want t’ do instead o’ somethin’ the government thinks you’d be good at.”

“You’re country isn’t in it,” Harry pointed out.

“Not yet,” Marvin responded. “Now, you’ve been workin’ here an’ there along with singin’. I don’t got no income but my trumpet. A man signs up he’ll get three squares a day an’ a cot.”

Harry took a drink of his whiskey and water and cast his gaze around the musicians gathered in the late night or, to those who were not musicians, early morning booze hall.

“You know, Marv, I’ve always wanted to learn to fly a plane,” Harry said.

Marvin clapped him on the shoulder. “Now you’re talkin’, boy. Royal Canadian Air Force. What say we go sign up first thing in the mornin’?”

Harry looked at his watch. “Might I suggest early this afternoon? I might be awake by then.”

 

Somewhere between Windsor, Ontario and Ashford, Kent, Harry lost touch with Marvin, but not with other men from the southern United States. Almost half the men stationed on the airfield were Americans who had traveled north to Canada and signed on with the RCAF.

Though they wore Canadian uniforms and insignia they were technically in Royal Air Force squadrons. The squadron commander was a British major, and Harry’s wing commander a Canadian Lieutenant or “Leftenant” as the British officers insisted. The other two Canadian pilots presently assigned to their understaffed wing were actually from Arkansas. In the two-man barracks enjoyed by RAF pilots one of those southerners, Otis Tyler was Harry’s bunk mate.

“Ah hear we all getting’ new radios next month,” Otis said as the two pilots walked down the hall one early morning in late August.

Harry shrugged with one shoulder as he held the door open with the other hand and let Otis out into the humid dawn. “Be fine if they’re better than the T9. But if they aren’t, well, I’m starting to get used to being up there all by myself.”

“Mighty handy fur tellin’ somebody where you’s ‘bout t’ crash,” Otis noted.

“As long as they work and you’re no more than a mile away” Harry countered. “The T9 is good for about that far. You’re probably better off depending on a farmer seeing you go down.”

Otis chuckled.

As they approached the mess hall their wing leader, Lieutenant Mapes reached the door and opened it for them.

“Good news chaps,” the officer said as the two non-coms passed through the door, he held open for them. “Just spoke with the CO. We stand down today.”

“Excellent!” Harry said. “Now I can have some real breakfast and more than one cup of coffee.”

“Yuh all worry too much ‘bout that coffee thing,” Otis said.

“Quite good policy,” the Lieutenant said.

“Nothin’ to it,” Otis responded. “Yuh all just take an empty cola bottle up with yuh.”

“I say, old boy, a bit hard to pee in a bottle when one is trying to avoid the 109 that is glued to your tail. Not to mention that bottle flying around loose in the cockpit.”

“Yuh all make sure yuh strap it in so it don’ fly ‘round,” Otis said. “As fur takin’ a leak when Gerry’s on muh tail an fillin’ my magic carpet full o’ holes, why ‘bout then I don’ have no trouble passin’ water.”

Lieutenant Mapes laughed. Harry grinned and shook his head in resignation.

“Since we aren’t going up to be shot at, perhaps we could talk about something else?” Harry suggested.

“Our Calm Colonial boy is right once again,” Mapes said. “We have a day to repair gear.”

“And talk about new radios,” Harry suggested.

“There isn’t anything to talk about,” Mapes said. “I’ve heard the same rumors as you men. However, I haven’t heard anything from the Old Man and I haven’t seen any radios. Other than the 9 in my Spit that quit working entirely the last time I was up.”

 

Later that day, Otis asked Harry to join him and some other airmen to study and review the local ladies and pubs. However, Harry had grown out of the need to wake up with a pounding hangover. He had already had years of partying. Besides, bringing in bullet scarred Spitfires had made the drinking bouts seem very unimportant. His mates, often a year younger or more, still asked him even though he seldom went with them.

An hour after the other pilots had gone into town Harry walked off the base and caught a ride into Ashford. He walked the streets for awhile admiring the buildings and the history.

Occasionally a Junkers 88 would fly across the English Channel very close to the water, start a steep climb to miss the Cliffs of Dover and release a bomb mounted to its belly at the end of that climb. The speed of the bomber combined with the force of the climb would cast that bomb for a very long way and it would land wherever the laws of physics, geology, and aerodynamics might decide and no man could say. On that beautiful day in late August, 1940 a building Harry had admired moments before and at that moment was no more than a block and a half away, disappeared in a cloud of dust, smoke and noise.

Harry Burnside had been flying over Britain for three months. He had been as far as France on a half dozen occasions. He had no idea how many dog-fights he had been in but had shot down three Me 109s and crash landed twice. He had landed successfully in Spitfires that probably should have quit flying several minutes before. He had been scared out of his mind on those occasions but had worked his way through it.

That day, on the streets of Ashford, after the completely random bombing of a very historic building, Harry Burnside could not control the choking fear.

Looking around he saw the sign for a pub, the Anvil and Hammer. He stepped through the door and saw ale glasses stacked on the bar. He turned the pint glass over and said to the barman, “Whiskey.”

The barman could see by the look on Harry’s face that discussion might be dangerous. He poured a shot into the ale glass.

“Fill it,” Harry ordered.

The inn keeper complied.

Harry downed the whiskey and noticed only in passing that it was smooth, a single malt.

            He put the glass back down on the bar and said, “Again.”

            Once it was full, he downed the second glass.

            He remembered opening the door to his barrack, but very little after that.

            Much later Otis Tyler returned to find his bunk mate, the man who usually refused to go drinking with his mates, passed out on the floor.

            “Burnside,” he said, as he picked Harry up and placed him on the bunk, “yuh all just like them travelin’ preachers back t’ home; preachin’ hell fire an’ brimstone then next thing yuh got some farmer’s daughter out behind the tent.”

            And that is how Sergeant Pilot Harold Burnside became known as “Deacon.”

 

 Native Sons in World War One

By D.M. McGowan and K.L. McGowan

© 2019

Seventeen native boys left the Upper Peace

The only land they’d known, all in their teens.

They’d all grown up wild out among the trees.

Knew where to find pelts, beaver ponds or streams.

They hunted for their supper, trap or single shot

And only their mothers gave safety a fleeting thought

 

After two hundred years of Scott and Fleur de Lis

They knew some other talk, sometimes two or three,

English, French and German were spoken in the land,

And whatever tongue was spoken by their particular band

Some of them could read and write more than just their name

But the army didn’t care, green privates all the same

 

An amazing great adventure for young trapper men

From freedom of the wild to a Canadian Army pen

Across the land in trains, something never seen.

Mistreated by a Sergeant, but still bright and keen.

Dropped off in camps and marched around a square

“Dig some dirt from here and put it over there.”

 

On the trains again east to Canada’s Maritimes

March down to the docks in perfect double lines

Then up a gangplank to a big steel canoe

Then told to put their kit where you couldn’t fit a shoe

A dozen ships in convoy from the Bedford shore

But count on German U boats sinking two or more.

 

More camp time in England, weeks without the sun

Then finally sent to France to show them how it’s done

Trenches that collapse from rains that never end

Bodies on the wire or sprawled out in no man’s land.

All caked in mud, “Are they ours? Are they theirs?”

Days and weeks of boredom, then terror and despair.

  

Vimy Ridge, the Somme or maybe Regina Trench

Maybe English on the left other times the French

High Wood or Kitchener’s, Avion as well

With the Aussies at Gallipoli, some lived to tell

Passchendaele, Arras, knowing each the end

If not for the war, surely for the men

 

Métis, Cree and Dane a total of Seventeen

On a great adventure, young, naive and keen

But the Great War wasn’t a great place to learn

For seventeen go but only two returned.