Chapter 3

Chapter Three

I remember the day the garage burned down; Nancy came up to my room and woke me up, “Dave! The garage is on fire, get up! You don’t want to miss this!” I got up as fast as I could and ran down stairs, sure enough, Fire trucks! And the garage was burning! Big crowd! Lots of flames, a first rate event! I must have been less than five or six years old, because I was so excited by all the flashing lights, shiny red trucks, and the spectacle of all the flames! I never gave a moment’s consideration to all the destruction and loss caused by the fire, or the devastating emotional strain it must have put on my parents.
Dad’s linotype machine was in there, this was what he used for his typesetting shop. It was completely destroyed. My mom had gone in early in the morning to light the pilot in the lead smelter. Propane gas that was collecting under the melting pot flashed off, burning my mom slightly and lighting the shop on fire. Luckily, mom got out with only minor burns. Fortunately good people in the neighborhood rallied together, rebuilt the garage, and helped repair my dad’s machines
The Milliken house always seemed to be trying to burn down. This time it was Nancy’s room that was formerly called the back shed. The back shed was an unfinished room attached to the back of the house. My dad had it remodeled into a room for Nancy. Dan smelled smoke and went in to the room to investigate the smoke. He found a large novelty pillow had fallen on a small electric portable heater that Nancy had in the room. The pillow was the only thing that was smoking and since it was not yet in flames; Dan decided that he should be able to carry the pillow to the door and just throw it out side. He was able to scoop the smoldering pillow up and started to make for the door. But before he can make it out the door, the integrity of the pillow fails and the highly flammable pillow stuffing spilled out everywhere and ignited like gasoline, driving him from the room.
The foam filling melted onto his bare feet and ankles and burned them badly. Undaunted, he finds a pail and fills it with the bathtub tap and charges into the room to throw it on the fire! He returns to the bathtub to get more water, but the old calcified pipes restricted the water flow to an agonizingly soft slow trickle from the tap. By the time he returns with the second bucket he sees that he has lost this battle, the room was fully engulfed.
The whole time this is all going on Dan is shouting as loud as he can “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!” now I am sure that I heard him, but I really was not listening, you see, Get Smart was on TV; it was the one where Zigfried from Kaos had a giant secret weapon disguised as an island.
“Where do you hide it?” Agent 86 asks Zigfried.
“You know ze Vouzand Islandz? Vone vouzand andz vone islandz!” replies Zigfried.
“Ingenious” remarks Max.
By the time a commercial came on it was all over, there was nothing I could do. It was too late, the room was fully engulfed, it was just a mater of inopportune timing, it wasn’t my fault; Get Smart was on. “Everybody out!” shouted my dad.
Everybody ran to the front door, as it was farthest from the fire. I was the last one in line as everyone piled out into the street, but I noticed that Get smart was just getting back from commercial. I analyzed the situation, there was a brick wall between the back room and the rest of the house, and we had closed the solid core wooden door to the room. So far the paint on our side of the door was only blistering slightly. The dark smoke hanging from the ceiling was only about a foot thick I was sure I still had enough time to catch the end of the show.
“How do you move an island this big?” Asks an apparently perplexed agent 86.
“Ahh! Look” Zigfried proudly announces as he removes a sheet that was covering a giant outboard motor.
“Why that’s amazing!” exclaims Max in his patented nasal drawl and zing.
At about that time, or a little while later; a firefighter comes in the front door, he is wearing a Scott air pack, gas mask and fully geared up. He stops at the entrance to the living room and he stares at me, looking a little confused. “Oh. The fires that way” I said pointing, and off he disappeared into the smoke. Not too far behind him were two more firemen, the first one glances at me, then does a double take and stops in his tracks, the fireman following him runs into the back of him and looks at the guy wondering why he stopped. The guy in front turns around and taps the guy behind him with the handle of his fire ax and motions towards me. The second fire man also does a double take when he sees the surreal image of me calmly watching TV.
“You gotta get outa here!” He demands.
“Wait!" I explained; “Get smart is almost over!” I put up an argument, “I really want to see how this thing was going to turn out!” referring to the TV show. But the firemen made me leave. Even though the door hadn't even burned through yet! Some newspaper guy saw the fireman and me coming out of the house. He was trying to make out like the fireman was some kind of hero that had rescued me or something. "What? No way!" I shouted; "I was just trying to watch the end of Get Smart on TV! The fire is way on the other side of the house!" The fireman and the reporter exchanged glances, and I slipped away into the gathering crowd.

By now I was getting very tired; my arm was pumping the pump very slowly. I would pull slowly on the handle, and inhale the air as it filled the toilet bowl. The effort of pumping air did help me stay a little warmer, but I was still wet. Each stroke of the pump handle brought in even more of the cold air, keeping the small space cool. But I needed that air, so it was a fair trade. I would have suffocated by now without it, and the cold draft provided the proof that fresh breathable air was replenishing my space.
I comforted myself by imagining how bad it would be right now if I were outside trying to sit on top of the pointy bow in these rising and falling swells. With the wind, and the snow and the water washing over me, I would last less than minutes out there, and if I lasted longer, it would have been torture to endure all that coldness. It was better inside here, even though I was trapped. I figured eventually she would sink, if I was still alive when that happened I would try to open the hatch in the deck and swim for the surface, it would be good to see the sky one last time before I died. At least that is what I told myself, I suppose I needed some reason to bother swimming for the surface, rather than just remain in that space till I died.
The Peg three was a better boat, it never killed any of us, and in fact it saved lives. I remember hearing one legend about when the Ashbridge’s Bay Yacht club planned a sailing regatta across Lake Ontario. My dad was asked to escort the regatta with his cabin cruiser, the Peg three. Johnny Van was a friend of my dads and he had a wooden leg. His wooden leg made it difficult for Johnny to get around on deck so he had weighted his keel with extra lead to make it more stable. This also slowed Johnny’s boat considerably, and so he left a few hours early to cross the lake so that they could all reach the other side about the same time.
A storm began to blow in about an hour after Johnny had left, it was getting worse and weather warnings were being broadcast so the regatta was canceled. Johnny was all alone on the lake, a storm was coming, and it looked like it was going to be a bad storm. Johnny had no ship to shore radio of any kind, and neither did my dad, it was not common in those days to consider communication to be important. There was no way dad could leave Johnny out there alone so he loaded the kids into the boat and off they went. The Peg third, had by that time earned so much of my dad’s confidence that he thought nothing of bringing the kids along on a rescue mission, even into a full blown gale.
The Dark firmament between the rising seas and the ominous anvil headed thundercloud threatened to close like a vice on the Peg Third as she sailed under it. It was the middle of the day and it had become as dark as night. From inside the Peg it looked like the clouds seemed to be hanging as if from a black sheet tied to the corners of the sky. Sagging so low that it seemed the ship’s short mast would tear it open. My dad maintained full speed on the propeller, twenty-four hundred-rpm. The Peg rose and fell on the huge swells, the occasional one breaking over the bow, at which time all the kids would let out a soft “ohh…wow!”
After about an hour under full power dad began looking with his field glasses to find Johnny. “We should be able to see him soon!” dad announced. The storm clouds were blocking the sun so the only illumination came when lightening would flash from the clouds. Eventually; after some time of searching my dad spied a mast on the horizon that was barely visible in the flashes of lightening. “There he is!” he shouted with excitement, and all the kids clamored around him.
“Can I see? Can I see?” they chorused. Dad gave them the field glasses, and in a much-disputed pecking order they all took turns looking through the glasses, trying to find the mast of Johnny’s boat. The wind was fierce, and was picking spray up off the surface of the lake. Turning it into horizontal rain and pounding it against the side of the boat. The roar it caused in the boat even drowned out the sound of the kids fighting over the field glasses. Still no one gave a moment of consideration to the awesome display as being a sign of any danger. It looked dangerous outside the boat; they all acknowledged that. But in their hearts they were not in the storm, the storm was outside; they were inside the Peg Three.
Then the clouds let loose, raindrops seemed like the size of baseballs as they pounded the boat, it was so loud it was the only thing anyone could hear. The wipers on the windscreen were ineffective, and the constant pounding layer of water covering the boat completely obscured all vision. At that, mom came up from the lower forward cabin to see what was going on. She came to my sister Margaret and enlisted her to go down into the forward cabin to sit and hold Danny the baby on the bunk, as the noise had made him stir from his sleep, Margaret complied.
The field glasses had lost the interest of the kids since the rain was now too heavy to see anything anyway. The wind was so stiff that diverse whistling sounds could be heard from different seams and crevices in the cabin door and window seals. Down in the galley the sink drain was open to the lake, so the lake water was spurting up through it with every heave of the boat. Dad could not see through his windscreen for the rain, so he kept the boat on course by the compass heading. He knew that the wind was blowing him off course but he reasoned that Johnny’s boat was being blown off course the same way just as much, so with some good fortune, in the end all things should work out even.
After about a half an hour, the rain let up enough so they could see out the windscreen behind the wiper sweeps. Again my dad was able to get glimpses of Johnny’s mast in the lightening flashes, he was much closer now. He did not need the aid of the field glasses to see Johnny anymore. The kids all climbed up on the bench seat opposite the helm, we called this the passenger seat, but really it is the navigator's chair. It was a padded bench seat about three feet wide, it faced forward so you could look through the windscreen. Between this seat and the windscreen it had a large area, large enough to roll maps and charts out on it. Usually however, it contained three kids, with their meals set on the chart area as a table setting. At this time however it was holding more than three kids, I don’t know how many in total, but I am sure it seemed like there was more than there actually was, because that’s the way kids are.
All the kids stared intently out through the glass waiting for a lightening flash to illuminate the screen so they could see Johnny. It was as if they were watching their favorite TV show, if we had even owned a TV by then, it was in the fifties so I don’t know. We had gotten closer now and in the flashes, Johnny could be seen at the stern of his yacht, fighting the storm from the helm. Dad tried to get his attention with the searchlight and the horn, but the storm drowned these signals out. We were getting closer now so dad had to throttle back to seventeen hundred rpm on the screw to keep from overtaking him. Everybody watched as Johnny’s boat rolled too and fro in the waves, now he was close enough that a dark outline of his boat could be seen in-between lightening flashes.
About another half hour went by and Johnny was frozen in a fixed gaze, ahead into the storm, and never looking back so that he could take notice of his pursuers. Dad did not want to get any closer in this kind of weather and was content to shadow Johnny’s every move from a safe distance. At this time dad realized that was all he would ever be able to do. There was no way to get near enough for Johnny to jump onto our boat with out there being a dangerous collision sinking both vessels. He most likely would not have wanted to leave his boat anyway, never wanting to believe that his situation was that bad. But maybe he did know it, even from that distance and through the din of the storm; the flashes of lightening revealed a stance of grave concern that seemed to be broadcasting from Johnny’s rigid frame.
Off in front of Johnny dad saw what appeared to be a white spot in front of the clouds, perhaps some light peeking through. It was moving quickly towards them however, and it was at that point that dad realized what it was. It was as if several waves had met up with each other and they had built one on top of another to make a massive wave, larger than my dad had ever imagined a wave could be. The white spot, a long skinny line marking its peak was the crest beginning to break.
For the first time ever, dad was not one hundred percent confidant in the Peg’s ability to handle what was coming. The kids, seeing this wave as well had a helpless feeling come over them, so when dad barked out an order for them all to get below, sit on the floor and hang on, they were glad to listen, at least there was something that they could do. Dad watched Johnny’s boat ride up the front of the approaching wave, until it disappeared over the foaming whitecap of the crest.
Dad was now looking down into a trough that was as deep as this wave was high. The Peg slid down to the bottom of this trough and into the front wall of the wave. The wave then lifted the boat up, every one feeling their stomachs float as it slid down now were feeling the force of being accelerated upward.
Before they reached the top of the wave, the kids could see the dark water pressed against the glass of the closed portholes. Then reaching the boiling froth of the breaking wave at the crest the peg was consumed in the wash. The foamy water has much less buoyancy than solid water, so the Peg sunk into it deeply and water sprayed through every opening or weak seal in the cabin windows and doors, trying to consume it. But the peg found solid water underneath the foam and held its own for a moment, everyone could sense in his or her stomachs the undulations of the hull in the water. The sink drain spouted like Old Faithful, showering everyone with the cold lake water.
Then the wave rolled the boat around and kicked it out the backside of the wave. In the galley the kids were trying to hang on as best they could, but some of them were tossed about as the boat capsized momentarily. Their screams were momentarily drowned out by the sounds of clinking pots and pans and smashing dishes. The stern was noticeably low as the Peg slid down the backside of the wave. The stern deck area had filled with water, and was loading it down. Slowly the boat settled up right and the water in the stern ran out the scupper holes back into the lake.
Behind the wave was a strange area of calm water, as if that huge wave was a bulldozer blade clearing a giant path. In the steady water all the kids came clambering up from the lower deck a little shaken. They were just in time to see the sight of Johnny, waist deep in the water, shimmying up his mast, as it sank out from underneath him. Looking like some kind of an episode from a cartoon. Perhaps he was hoping it would reach the bottom and stop upright so he would have something to hold on to.
Dad slid the Peg up along side Johnny as he was treading water while trying to remove his wooden leg. The Peg third, with its well-muffled six-cylinder gray marine inboard engine and its wooden hull was silent in the water. If you were in the water next to it, you can’t even hear a sound from it. My dad maneuvered the Peg and came up behind Johnny, he had no idea that my dad was there. Johnny had been in the cold water for less than a minute. My dad slid his window open and leaned out, and looked down the six feet or so to the water surface where Johnny was still struggling with his leg.
“Hha ya ba doen' Johnny!” My dad shouted with his best Scottish Highlander accent.
Johnny turned around in the water with a look of absolute astonishment on his face. The look on the old Swede's face turned to what seemed like a look of disappointment; “I vaught yaw vas tzet LAORD callinz me!” replied Johnny; properly astonished. My dad loved telling that part of the story. I guess he thought it was kind of fun to be mistaken for the Lord once in a while.
There was another time when the Peg three honored those who built her; it was a Sunday, June fifth, nineteen fifty-four. The Peg was not entirely successful this time and five young men died. Five more however were saved, and they would have died as well had it not been for the providence of God that day. On this particular day the Morrison family made headlines. Not small headlines in local papers of one-horse towns but big city papers. The Toronto Star, the Globe and mail and the telegram. Mom decided that it would be okay to go sailing on the boat this day instead of going to church and sending the kids to Sunday school. Whenever my mom or dad would tell this story they always made a point that it was not normal for them to be boating rather than in church on Sunday. I got the feeling that they were most ashamed that when the newspapers spread the story everyone knew that they were not in church on Sunday.
Dad had thought to go east, but mother wanted to go to the island, so he set a course for Center Island. My mom loved center island, she would always light up when ever she reminisced about times when she had been there. I was very young, younger than five as I was not in school yet. When my mom wanted to get her driver’s license, she was pretty excited about it, she was planning to get dad to give her driving lessons again, and this time she was determined to succeed. “When I get my license,” she said, “I can take us to the zoo and we can take the glass bottomed boat to Center Island!” She was beaming with excitement. But it never happened.
It was this change in course that lined them up with the path of these boys. On the horizon was something bobbing on the waves, they tried to make it out with the field glasses but at first it was unrecognizable. As they got closer it seemed like someone was standing on something waving at them, some thought it was a seagull, but then dad realized that it was a man. Carefully focusing the field glasses he was able to make out the figures of four young men sitting on an overturned boat, around it were heads dotting the water.
Dad gave it full throttle towards them, the whole time sounding the siren and the horn to get the attention of other boaters. But the wind was blowing the noise away from a regatta of yachts that were off to the starboard side and nobody heard. As dad neared the boat he could see that some of those in the water had life jackets and some of them did not. Dad was afraid that the ones without life jackets would drown and sink into the lake never to be seen again.
In nineteen fifty-four, hypothermia was not common knowledge, if you died in the water you drowned. And inhaling water caused drowning, so those with life jackets on had their head held above the water and so it was thought that they couldn’t drown. With this knowledge in hand, my dad made the decision to rescue those without life jackets first.
The boys clinging to the overturned boat did not have life jacket and looked like they were ready to slip into the sea, so dad decided that they were his first priority. There was a lad screaming for help not far from being along side the boat, but he had a life jacket on, so my dad yelled, “I will be right back! Hold on!” He motored the twenty-five yards or so towards the overturned boat, while the boy screamed louder and louder. It is ironic that this decision by my dad sealed the fate of all those who wore life jackets, not understanding the devastating effects of hypothermia, the life jackets were of no factor in determining the survival time of the lads in the water. The cold water would claim its victims long before drowning was even a factor, whether they were wearing a life jacket or not. In this situation, wearing a life jacket put two strikes against them, one, it allowed them to relax, and so without needing to swim or tread water, the inactivity allowed the cold to get a tighter grip on them. Two; my dad, not realizing that those in life jackets were no better off than those without lifejackets, made the fateful decision to rescue those without life jackets first.
The free board of the Peg three was about four and a half feet at its lowest point at the stern. There was no swim deck on the Peg three just a rope ladder. But the boys were too cold and exhausted to pull themselves up. Sandy and dad worked as hard as they could, trying to pull the helpless men out of the water, it was like pulling on wet sacks of sand, the lads were in such a deteriorated state that they were all just dead weight. The amount of time it took just to get one of them into the boat was cruelly frustrating, as others were hanging in their life jackets and dying.
Dad was hoping that once inside the boat the boys would be able to help pull the others out. But once they got them in the boat some would lose control of them selves and be convulsing on the floor of the boat. Some walked under their own power into the cabin and would sit down with a blanket wrapped around them and then die, while just sitting there. They were of no help; the cold had tallied its final toll on them.
The wind had now blown the boys and scattered them, there was one boy screaming for help and he was apart from the main group. So dad lowered the tender dinghy and he and Sandy rowed up to the screaming boy to pull him out of the water, hoping it would be easier to get the lad into the small boat. But by the time they reached him he was unconscious, and they couldn’t lift him. This proved to be very dangerous as the victims were at this time helpless and the efforts to pull them into the dinghy almost capsizes it. This plan was abandoned and back to the Peg they went with the wind and the waves blowing against them. Dad rowed as hard as he could, and he was severely exhausted when they reached the Peg.
Dad brought the Peg third along side of the boy. Sandy went down the ladder and grabbed the boy under the armpits; dad hooked him with the boat hook and heaved. But it was no use; they could not get him over the side. There was one boy that was sitting silently in the cabin, dad told him sternly that he had to help to save this boy, he nodded silently. The extra help did the trick and they got him on board.
Dad motored up alongside the last group of boys in the water; they were a pathetic pitiful sight. Hung in there life preservers, arms raised, and heads limp face down in the water, they were obviously dead. Then one raised his face up out of the water and looked up at the boat. He made eye contact with my mother was holding a long pole with a sharp point and a sharp spur-hook in the end called a boat hook. He then went limp and slid out of his life jacket and began to sink under the boat, his death gaze fixed on my mother as he sank.
My mother instinctively stabbed at him with the boat hook, pulling him back to the surface, not willing to give up on this lad. She maneuvered him towards the ladder and to the attention of Sandy and my dad who then struggled to pull him on board. They worked feverishly to revive him. They managed to get all but two into the boat; they had lost sight of those two and could not find them. Inside the Peg it was a horrible scene, young men convulsing on the floor, one was delirious and raved as he tossed in the bunk. Some were quiet, others sobbing. One laid dead in his own vomit; death takes all dignity with it.
Dad spotted a cutter and came along side her, at first they didn’t notice dad alongside, and then Dad got their attention. Victor Thompson came on board from the cutter and worked on the unconscious boys as they made for shore. The final count was three dead, two missing, and five rescued alive. They all did the best that they could, and they all grieved that they could not have done better.
The Peg third was floated out of her slip and beached to make way for the Lady Susan about fifteen years later. She sat at the mercy of the ice and the elements for three years, until deteriorated to an eye sore. For the Peg III, the days of glory were far behind forever, to dad, it was as if it was the death of an old friend when she was then cut to pieces with a chain saw and burned. Dad refused to witness this act, like Pontius Pilot, this was dad’s way of washing his hands of the deed.
Dad’s favorite stories were about boating, being on the lake, it was easy to get him excited about recounting those events that he cherished. He was vaguer about the war. He would tell of specific incidents, usually happy moments, heroic moments, and very few bloody moments. There was however one incident where his C.O. was shot by a sniper in the head while my dad was talking to him, and another time when his tank was hit by large shell during a battle. Other than that most of his stories were of day to day life in the fields of Europe.
He also would tell of the time when he was in his signal tank looking for vantage points to direct allied fire from. Early in the morning, at about exactly sunrise he got out of his tank, as he was relieving himself the sun made its first glow in the sky. The black of night turned to the dark blue of pre dawn. In the dull pre dawn light he could see more than dozens of holes in the field he had driven the tank into. They were foxholes, German foxholes. My dad made his way into his signal tank and from there ordered the Germans to surrender. At this the German commander showed himself waving a white flag, dad told him to order his men to lay down there arms and form marching lines or he would kill him. The Gerry commander complied and the soldiers all laid down their weapons in surrender and prepared for marching.
Dads tank had no gun, just a wooden barrel painted black to look real, the machine gun dad was using from inside the turret was fake as well, this was a radio tank, and with all the radio gear there was no room for guns or ammo. He marched the one hundred and thirty five prisoners into some town near by where the allies had set up a HQ and turned the prisoners over to them. As dad marched them into the town he needed them to make a right turn, so he told the Gerry commander to order a right turn and he did. As the prisoner tuned the corner dad could no longer see them because of the buildings, and he expected them to flee when they realized that he could not see them. But they did not, when dad got to the corner and turned his tank, every one of the prisoners was still marching in a straight line.
As for the story of when my dad's tank was hit by a shell, fortunately the shell was a dud, and it did not explode. But when the shell hit it hit with such force that it knocked them all unconscious. Dad was the first to wake up and roused his tank mates, except for the tank commander, who was sitting exactly where the shell hit, and at the time of impact was sitting against the bulk head. The full shock of the hit was directed to his body and it killed him. Dad climbed out of the tank to see what had happened, and saw an unexploded shell lodged in the side of the tank.
Specialist came over and defused the shell to make sure it would not explode. Dads tank was the only signal tank to lead that entire regiment into battle at this point. Radio tanks were few and far between, a precious commodity, so the fact that the shell did not explode was very auspicious indeed. My dad was now temporarily in command, since the tank commander had been killed. Dad was asked if the tank was well enough to lead the regiment into battle or if they should hold up where they were until a new radio tank could be brought in.
Dad went into the tank and tested all the radios, started the engines, and tried all the tanks systems. “Everything seems fine,” dad told them, “there is nothing wrong with this tank, we may as well use it”. So on dad’s recommendation they moved on, not waiting to replace the tank. It was about three days later when they were about a day from where they anticipated engaging enemy resistance, when with out warning dad’s tank quit. It quit cold, the engines quit, nothing worked, and not even a light bulb to illuminate the radio dials, nothing.
The commander of the regiment was furious with my dad, as my dad had certified the tank fit, and now it obviously was not. They were very close to the front lines, they could easily be within range of German guns, and without dad’s tank, and they would be fighting blind. They had been traveling down old farm roads, and pastures, there now was what appeared to be a large open field rising to a hill on the horizon. They were planning to make it to the top of that hill to stop for the night, as the high ground would give a good vantage-point. Now, with out a signal tank, they would be a sitting duck up there. Dad was going to be court marshaled.
Dad could not find why the tank had quit, and mechanics were going over it now to see if they could get it working well enough to radio for a new signal tank to be brought in. They did not want to use any of their field radios as the Germans could receive the signal and know that there was a regiment within range without a signal tank. Only the radios on board dad’s tank were secure enough to send such a message.
To send a secure message, dad had to stretch out a long antenna wire, more than a mile long, the exact length, critical, was top secret. Then, he could transmit a message, and only those who had the exact same antenna configuration could receive it. But for now, they had no secure means of transmitting. They had code, but this close to enemy lines, they could not risk using an open radio frequency, and even on the long antenna they would send messages in code.
The situation was grave, they were sitting ducks, if there were German guns hiding somewhere near by and those guns opened up against them they would not be able to organize an effective defense, they would be slaughtered. At some point, with all the activity going on around dad’s tank someone noticed an anti tank mine not four feet in front of the left track of dad’s tank. If dads tank had run for two seconds longer he would have run into it and been blown to bits.
At that revelation the focus of the engineers and specialists were off my dad’s tank and onto the mine. The specialists defused the mine and fanned out searching for more mines. It turned out that they were surrounded by mines, and that it was only providence that none of the tanks had run over one and been blown up yet. The minefield was mapped out and the defused by the specialists. At about this time a reconnaissance team returned with bad news, the German Tanks they had been pursuing were literally dug in beyond the hill at the end of that field, waiting to ambush them while they were mired in the minefield. My dad was ordered to get his tank working again and to keep trying too get it going and not to stop unless he was killed by enemy fire.
There was an ominous atmosphere of portentous fear that descended upon the battlefield, at any moment the Germans could begin to blow them to bits, and all they would be able to do is run. Once the Germans had them on the run things would get worse, this is how wars are lost.
Dad was puzzled and under a lot of stress, he did not know where to begin looking for the problem, so he just tried the engines again and they started up and all the radios came to life.
“You fixed it? The regiment commander asked.
“It is working now, but it is not fixed, it just started working I don’t know why,” my dad replied.
“Well it will have to do!” barked the commander.
Dad’s job was to find a position of vantage to direct the fire of the tanks. To do this would require stealth. Tanks are not very stealthy, they squeak so loud that you can hear them for miles. A team of soldiers with grease pails and brushes and rags surrounded dad’s tank, they greased everything to keep it quiet as possible. Then dad would move out slowly, the team of greasers applying grease to every squeak as they went, they had to keep it quiet.
Dad reached a spot where he could see all the German tanks set for the ambush. He slowly crept the tank up to the spot where he could see them well enough to call in fire, but where he hoped they would not notice him. Then he noticed a lone German soldier climb up from the German position and carrying a radio and large field glasses jump into a fox hole about three hundred or more yards from him. This was the German signalman; dads counter part of the other side. The soldier propped himself on the edge of the foxhole and supported by his elbows on the ground to steady his large field glasses as he surveyed the allied tank positions.
Dad called down on his radio, and guided the barrel of some allied sniper rifle to the spot where he could see the German signalman. There was no sound, the man just fell dead, and slid out of sight into his foxhole. Dad had wished he had not seen that, till that point he had no first hand proof that he had caused the death of anyone. It was not as bad as he thought, he should have felt something, but he didn’t. He felt worse that he did not feel very bad about this guys death than he actually did about this mans death, it was curious moment for him, he did not know what to make of it. He thought of the man's family, perhaps they were writing him a letter at that very moment not yet know he was dead, this made him remorseful, which he thought was at least better than feeling nothing at all. But business at hand would interrupt this inner reflection.
Dad had to call in and direct the fire onto the tanks. With the battle on, dad calling in the coordinates for every shot was very effective, but there was a sense of urgency, at any moment dads tank could fail again, and they would be blind, unable to aim their tank guns not knowing where the enemy positions were. One by one they were destroying the enemy’s positions, then there was a large blast outside dad’s tank, he was spotted by one of the German tanks and that tank was getting ready to fire another round at him. As good fortune would have it, dad had already signaled the firing orders upon that very tank and before it could get another shot off it was blown to bits.
The Germans did not stand a chance, the signalman that dad had directed the sniper to, was the enemy's eyes, they were blind without him. Dad kept a close eye on that foxhole. Every time a replacement signalman would climb up the hill and get to that foxhole dad would alert the snipers who would make short work of him. He was careful to avert his eyes while the sniper took the shot, he could not bear to watch. Dad was calling in fire as fast as he could, knocking out tanks left and right. He felt a strange ability come upon him, he was able to superimpose the grid over the battle field as he looked directly at the field, no longer needing to take the time to refer to the cumbersome grid maps to communicate the positions he wanted to fire at.
The allied tanks were firing as fast as they could be reloaded and hitting their targets, there were easily twice as many German tanks as allied tanks and that’s not including the German artillery. But dad was calling in the shots so fast that they were being systematically obliterated. Dad was able at that point to call firing solutions to fifty allied tanks so fast that all the crews on those tanks were loading and firing as fast as they could. Before the sun had completely set, the guns fell silent; the German position had been completely destroyed in the ensuing firestorm. The survivors of this barrage were now gratefully surrendering to allied troops.
After the battle the German commandant was surprised to learn that the allies had only one signalman, and he wanted to meet this man, my dad, but dad never did meet him. Dad said that they kept the German chefs that they had captured from the German army at this battle with them for several months because they were excellent chefs. He joked that they often threatened their own chefs that they were going to be sent over to the German side. Dad said that sometimes when they took prisoners he would find it surprising how the German prisoners held no ill will, no grudge, just acceptance of the outcome. They had the incredible ability to understand the concept of being “in contest” and that it was not to be taken personally, it was a just a hard game with hard rules.
Dad was still facing a court marshal for certifying a faulty tank, but it was determined that a hair line fracture in the armor of the tank caused the fault, and that it was impossible for dad to have detected this in the field. Due to that finding the court marshal was dropped. The result of that tank battle meant that they made it to Holland and stood poised for Amsterdam’s liberation. Dad was now without a tank because his battle-damaged tank was removed from service. Instead he would be on a half-track until a new signal tank could be made ready.
It way the last week of April 1945, dad’s division was busy trying to liberate Amsterdam, but short a Signal tank, their progress was slowed. Hundreds of Canadian tanks deliberately had to halt and slow their advance on Amsterdam because they needed as many signal tanks as possible to guide their guns. It took eight days for dad’s new tank to be made ready. During this time his duty’s included several reconnaissance trips up and down a road that followed the Rhine River.
There was a young man that was manning a machine gun nest covering that road that saw dad pass by every day. Years later when he was an old man I met this war veteran. He told the same story that my dad had told me, not knowing who I was or even knowing my dad. The old veteran told me of this half-track that was manned by a tank crew that was waiting for a new tank, everyday for about a week he would see them go by, until their new tank arrived.
“I could her that half track miles away, the guy driving it was a mad man, I would see him round the corner coming towards me, sliding those tracks side ways, picking the inside front tire right up off the road! It looked as if it was going to roll over! I was sure they were going to crash one of those times for sure…but they never did.”
On the day the half-track stopped at his machine gun nest and introduced them to a new crew that was going to man the half-track since their new tank had arrived. “They introduced me to them…” said the old veteran, “…so that when I saw the different men on the half track that I wouldn’t get trigger happy. We were getting jumpy at that time, the Germans were trying to get us out of North Holland, and we were ordered to shoot anything that was out of the ordinary.”
On the very day that dad got his new tank, the new crew that took over that half track did there first reconnaissance up the Rhine, following the same road, doing the same things that my dad would have been doing if his new tank had not arrived that day. The Germans had mined the road that day and these fresh young men were all killed on their first trip out. “It was such a shame… Those poor young boys, four days later the war was as good as over…four more days and they would have made it home…”
It seems incredible that this old veteran and my dad had once crossed paths in Holland, and then, I crossed paths with him, and he tells me a story I had already heard. But my dad never told me about his replacements being killed; I don’t think he ever knew. In fact he always talked in fond terms of that detail, he said the Rhine River delta was beautiful and he enjoyed driving up and down along the winding river road in that half track. I had always sensed that he reluctantly had to give the half-track to the new guys and return to his tank.
Before my dad died he deteriorated and wasted away for ten years, the last five years exponentially worse than the preceding five. He was so weak that last year of his life I had to walk him anywhere that he wanted to go, supporting him as much as I could so that his legs need not carry his deteriorated one hundred and two-pound frame. He no longer could go to the bathroom whenever he wanted, he just did not have the strength to pull himself up. But except for the last four months of his life he still worked, sitting at that linotype machine, plucking away at the keys as fast as he ever had.
I had been driving the type to deliver it to the printer in Toronto for my dad for two years by then. I had no drivers license I was too young, only fourteen. Dad would come along and usually fall asleep in the passenger seat of that big old Sedan de Ville, and I would always make it to the printer. The printer would look at me sometimes, I knew what he was thinking; I did not look old enough to drive that car. Dad's health was failing fast, and there were times when it seemed his usually sharp mind had slipped a little. He would think that he was youngster for a moment, talking as if he had gone back in time, but he would catch himself, “That’s not right” he would mutter, and then some how force himself to come back to reality.
It was one of these times, dad was sitting in the living room stating in a very loud authoritative voice a stream of numbers, and what sounded like code names. He was very precise, and would repeat each complicated list of words and numbers clearly and exactly. It caught my attention and I went into the living room to see what was going on. Dad was alone in there, and after I tried to get his attention, he resisted me for a moment and then realized that he was an old man sitting on a couch, not a young soldier on a battle field.
He instantly came back to reality and said: “I deserve this.” Implying his deteriorated condition. “I should have died a young man, but I was afraid, and I have lived with the fact that I let fear stop me from doing what was right ever since. And what did I resurrect myself to in that day of cowardice?” again referencing the weakness of his body…“This?” With his eyes full of tears he told me this story.
“It was my third day in Europe during the war. We came to this place where the Gerry’s had huge gun emplacements and the tanks would be sitting ducks driving through, but this route that was the only firm ground that the tanks could go on, there was no way around it. We had to wait. There were hundreds of troops trying to flank the guns to take them out. There were trenches dug every where and there was barbed wire and all kinds of things to tangle a man up in. It was raining; the clouds were too low so the air planes could not attack from the air.
I had never seen combat at that time, I had not even heard a shot in those first three days, but arriving at this place we went up into the trenches, and before long fighting broke out. The Gerry’s had the whole place covered, a new young captain had shown up and they were telling him to keep his head down, but he seemed to feel the need so that had to keep taking a look, and soon his head was blown off. At some point a young German soldier was cut down by gun fire while trying to run the line. He fell tangled and wounded onto the long barbs and razors of the ruthless wire; he was maybe only twenty yards or so away. He was not dead; he was stuck in the wire crying in pain, but not dead.
There was not constant firing, just bursts of firing here and there, but if you stuck any thing up out of the trench the Gerry’s shot it instantly, we were pinned down, but the Gerry’s were pinned down as well, nobody could move without getting shot. This man, a boy only, was caught in the wire hurt and crying in pain. Nobody could reach him from either side without getting shot and killed.
I moved along the trench and found a spot that I could see this man from without getting in the line of fire from the enemy. He was hanging upside down, tangled in the wire crying in agony. “Helfen Sie mir” he would moan “Helfen Sie mir” Which I learned meant that he was crying for help. I could see his face and we made eye contact “Helfen Sie mir,” he would plead to me. Then he would sob, “Mutter! Helfen Sie Mutter!” He was calling for his mom. Then the boy would pass out from the pain, I thought that he had died, but that night he began to weep and cough, and call out for his mother again.
Five days passed, the boy was still crying in the wire, for five nights I had to fall asleep to the sound of this boy crying for help. I could do nothing, if I showed any part of me above the trench I would have surely been shot dead. I wanted to help him, but I was scared, terrified of climbing out of that trench, I reasoned that it would be a vain attempt; I would die and accomplish nothing, so I kept my head down. To this day I believe there was a bullet with my name on it waiting for me and I missed it. And I have to live with that every day”.
“There was nothing you could do, even if you tried like you said yourself they would shoot you and you would not be able to help anyone.” I said to him.
“That does not mater, the outcome of a mans actions are not what God looks for, just obedience to what is right. It was right that I try to help that boy even when it meant certain death and failure was assured! Perhaps that boy seeing me killed would be Gods way of showing that boy that there was a love that was enough towards him that some one would die for him. If a man has an opportunity to show the love of God to some one in such away it is a privilege, and I should not have turned my back on that.” my dad tearfully explained.
“If ever you find yourself in a position where fear is stopping you from doing the right thing set it in your mind now that you will not let fear stop you, think; can you live with the outcome of following the guidance of fear?” He concluded.
I had never known the warrior poet that was my dad; I only knew of the sickly old man that I hoped would get better and be strong again. One month later my dad would die, not in a blaze of glory as would have befitted him, but gradually, until at some point he was gone.

I closed my eyes and squeezed them tight, the thoughts of my dad stirring old forgotten emotions. The cold air that pumped in with each stroke of the handle of that diaphragm pump was cool and seemed to comfort me as it blew across my tear soaked cheeks. But then I began thinking, if dad had died that day I would never have been born! Had he even considered that in his regrets?