BGLII He

ANOTHER NOV. LI has
passed and there were fewer
blue berets in the parade
again this year. Now the
solemn official ceremonies are
over, the Last Post played and
the wreaths iaid. Our family
will quietly get ready for the
real “Remembrance Day”:
Dec. 25, Christmas Day.

By John Moore
Contributing Writer

Nothing was ever said about “the
war” at Christaias, and it took me
most of a lifetime to connect the
clues in this mystery.

As a boy, 1 only knew that
Christmas Day was the one day of
the year 1 would sce my mother's
father, William Jackson, and my
father, William Ashworth Moory,
take a glass of whisky.

Neither of them ever got drunk. }
was puzzled because they took their
drink, not exactly like
medicine, but with

+ such detached ritual

gravity that 1 sensed

- this act was about
‘something other than
Christmas as a gift- /
greedy little boy under

" stood it. : vA

‘After ‘Christmas
dinner we would gath-
er around the upright
piano, played by my
Auntie Vi-and sing
carols, When we'd covered all the
standards my grandfather would .

. Place;his glass on the top of the
piano and look at my aunt, Then she
would play “his songs”: It’s a Long
“Way to. Tipperary, ‘Pack Up Your
Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag, etc.
and we would sing along.

“AL was old enough to be drafted |
and killed before I really grasped the
incongruity of singing First World
War marching songs at Christmas,
but I always knew, there was some-
thing strange about my Bente

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grandad, who Pd heard quietly
singing bymns in church, belting out
those songs with a fierce desperate
gaicty that was nothing like him,

My own father did not sing. They
had soldiered in the same regiment,
the Winnipeg Grenadiers, but in dit-
ferent wars.

When the handful of grenadiers
who survived the heroic futile
defence of Hong Kong and four hell-
ish years in PoW camps came home,
my grandad was one of the. “old sol-
diers" who put on his beret, met
them at the dock and made sure they
had a warm bed and a hot dinner.

My grandad took my 95-pound
father home and introduced him to
his beautiful daughters.

My father sensibly married the
eldest when he recovered his
strength, My sister and brother and |
owe our existence to a sniall piece of
cheap metal stamped in the shape of

an exploding grenade: the insignia of
* the Winnipeg Grenadiers,

My father never talked ubout
“his” war.

66 He spent his next three

Christmases behind barbed wire,
starved, beaten and enslaved. 99

My grandad, who fought at
Ypres, Passchendale, the Somme
and Vimy Ridge, told me one story
about “the Great War"

In the early years they had truces
on Christmas Day, and the German
and Canadian soldiers left their
trenches, met in ‘no man’s land,”

-built bonfires, swapped rations,

played soccer, traded pictures of
their families. They sang O
Christmas Tree/O Tannenbaum as a
round. The brass hats on both sides
put a stop to this nonsense, and on

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the following day, they were killing
each other with barrages, bullets und
bayonets.

T remember Grandad was sad and
embarrassed us he told me this when
L had grown too big to hide my fin-
ger up to the third knuckle in the soft
hole inside his collarbone where he
had taken a bullet going “over the
top.”

Until the day he died, Grandad
had nightmares, nat about men he
killed, but about wounded men who
drowned in shell-holes full of mud
while he was too weak from his
wounds to rescue them.

On Christmas Day (941, my
father and his comrades surrendered
Hong Kong to the Japanese. He
spent his next three Christmases
behind barbed wire, starved, beaten
and enslaved. Those Chrisunases
caught up with him 15 years later.
When he died he was 40 years old.

When iny first son was born |
was four years older than my father
ever got to be,

Naming him after my dad was
not a sentimental ges-
ture; it was a cold-
blooded act of
vengeance. Maybe his
son, or his son’s son, or
a great great grandson
will carry that name
and walk this earth
when all the empires,
the British Empire, the
German Empire, the
Japanese Empire, are
no more than the excre-
ment of paper-fleas in-
the margins of unread history books.

I know now why my dad and
grandad were so awfully quiet and
so terrifyingly gay over their whisky

on Christmas Day. They were drink- °

ing with the dead, drinking for all
the Christmases spent under fire and
behind barbed-wire, drinking for all
their comrades, friends, who would
never come home to spoil their chil-
dren, grandchildren and great-grand-
children ‘around the family
Christmas tree.

The Cold War is over; the world

Elleelrelrelralelreltetrelrel eelreltelpelelelelelreliel ele

ele leer elelelpel eral el olalaleheyelelrelal

is supposed to be at peace and every-
where ancient tribal hatreds are
breaking out like boils on a corpse.

My dad and grandad, (vo gencra-
tions of Winnipeg Grenadiers, will
hot see my son's first Christmas.

At some point in the festivities on
Dec. 25, | will look at this innocent

litle boy and shudder. Then I'l! take
asmall medicinal glass of whisky
out into the backyard for two min-
utes of silence, to think about the
mothers and fathers, the wives and
children of all the young men all
over the world who won't be coming
home for Christmas.

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