The Rural Voice, 2004-11, Page 30SONS
& BACON
In two World Wars
Canada's farms
provided sons for
soldiers and fed
Britain and the
armies
By Barbara Weller
As another Remembrance Day
approaches I have been
thinking about the
contribution of farm families to the
World Wars. Canadian farmers were
often chosen for war missions that
required stamina and resourcefulness,
both qualities that are necessary for
the successful farmer.
My father told this story about
World War I, the war to end all wars.
He was nine years old when the war
began in 1914.
"In 1915 my brother Hugh, who
had left our farm in Scarborough
Township to work on a farm near
Regina, enlisted in the army. He
came home on leave to visit before
he was shipped overseas. I remember
running to meet him as he walked
home across the fields to the farm
near Armadale. Then he shipped out
to France and Belgium. My sister
used to make him fruitcakes to send
overseas where he would share them
with his buddies, and I wrote to him,
telling all the news from home.
"His job was with the horses
because he had worked with horses
all his life both at home on the farm
and out on the prairies. They used
teams of work horses to haul the big
26 THE RURAL VOICE
guns from one location to another
and to move them into place. When
the regiment moved, Hugh looked
after hitching up the team, getting the
big guns loaded and driving the team
to the next location. He looked after
the care and feeding of the horses
too. It was a job where Hugh's
experience with work horses and
farm machinery was a valuable asset.
"Somebody got the idea to use all
silver grey animals when they could
get them, just for show. That was a
bad idea. The silver grey reflected in
the mnonlight and the horses made a
great target.
"One day near the end of the war
Hugh got the order to retreat with his
team and the guns they were hauling.
There was heavy artillery fire . The
horses were trained somehow to go
down when the firing got heavy.
Hugh got the one horse down but the
other one spooked, rearing up. Hugh
couldn't get it down. The horse was
hit by shrapnel and killed, while
Hugh took shrapnel in the side of the
head and in the arm. He was in
hospital over in England for about a
year and never went back to the
front. Nearly the whole regiment he
was with was wiped out.
"1 remember there was another
fellow from Agincourt over there by
the name of Brown. He was killed
the day after the Armistice was
signed in 1918. What a waste!
"There was great celebration
when the war ended and the word
spread quickly. As I walked home
from school there were people
driving madly around the roads in
Scarborough Township honking and
cheering."
...
By the time the Second World
War cracked open the world a scant
21 years later, my father was in his
mid -thirties, a farmer and the father
of four small children. Horse power
had been supplanted by machines.
My father's contribution to the
war was to keep on producing food
for the home front, but my mother's
younger brothers were in the army.
Farm help was hard to find because
many of the young single men had
gone off to war.
The war was far away but still
young children in Canada caught the
sense of danger. We kept quiet while
our elders huddled by the radio
waiting for news. We watched the
news reels that preceded the rare