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
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.”
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.
