Selwyn House School - Yearbook (Montreal, Quebec Canada)

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SFLWYN HOUSE SCHOOL MAGAZINE Nly tent is good and tight but everything is pretty damp and clammy just from the humidity - so life is not too cheerful and the rain keeps on pouring down. My battery command post is in the farm house which is quite dry. Our meals are usually very good, mainly, I think, because we are able to live off the land to a large extent. A great number of the positions we have been in were almost completely evacuated by the local inhabitants who very kindly left a large part of their livestock behind them. XVe made our appreciation and found only one course open. Activity, ours and the enemy's, varies with the weather, but in all kinds of weather we are always the more active. We must out-shell him about ten to one - but I will say this f his shelling is extremely accurate, which makes me think that with his total lack of air observation he must have our areas sown with agents -an easy thing for him to do as he retreats. As far as the air is concerned hejust doesn't exist, except for the odd raid at night. One of the finest sights we see, and we see it almost every fine day, is our medium bombers and dive bombers going over in an almost endless procession. The Hak that greets them is usually pretty hot but only once have I seen one hit. Our fighters maintain constant cover - I have never seen them engage an enemy plane. They usually stooge around until they get bored, then zoom down and do a bit of shooting up before they go home. Our life during mobile warfare is fairly hectic as we move every two or three days, which is always tiring, but at other times I personally find life every easy, at least com- pared with my last job where I was almost always on the go for sixteen to eighteen hours a day. I must say I preferred that life to this. My main work now consists of going around visiting the men. An occasional trick at a Brigade H.Q. as regimental representative helps to break the monotony. The most paramount thought in all our minds now is when will we get home ? The longer a man has been overseas the more he thinks about it for he naturally feels that he is more entitled to some consideration than the more recently joined. And in this thought we are getting rather bitter. I frankly feel that our Government has let us down regarding home leave. England, the US., New Zealand CI am not sure about the other Dominionsj have all placed a time limit on overseas service so that their men known definitely that they have to go on for so long before they can expect home leave. Our poor fellows have nothing at all to go on e for all we know old age may be our first reason for asking to be send home. We feel that the reason for this is not lack of shipping space, but lack of reinforce- ments, and that this lack is due to our namby-pamby system of enlistment, i.e., lack of conscription. I don't think eonscription could possibly be brought in now, butldo think our Government could have foreseen this difficulty five years ago. They tell us there are plenty of trained reinforcements at home f I NVhat is the answer ? Mind you, I think the Government has done a magnificent job in a great many ways. As far as I can figure out the financial side ofour war effort has been handled well - our production has been magnificent !the plans for rehabilitation and soldiers' grants sound good as well as generous. I10l

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FOR THE SCHOOL YEAR 19-H-1945 TWO LETTERS FROM OLD BOYS HE following letter has been received from Gunner Bl. Lewis, whose earlier note we printed in our last issue. It has been a long time indeed since I last wrote to you, and a great deal has happened during the interim. I was one of those fortunate people who landed on D-Day, but the rough trip across the Channel the night before took away a great deal of the pleasure. As we beached I saw a great many new things for the first time, Germans for one thing. The beach was strewn with mines, and the dead and wounded presented a strange sight to one unaccustomed to war. Prisoners, complete with suitcases, were being loaded on to a landing craft just as soon as the troops and vehicles had disembarked. In spite of the terrific bombardment, the townspeople were out to welcome us, some even with flags kept hidden during the occupation. Our first position was in a mineheld, but no one seemed worried until the Engineers got to work. Then followed several uncertain days, when guns pointed in all directions and snipers had a field day. One day we captured four of them, in a hedge in front of us. They had a nasty habit of sniping when the guns were firing, and consequently gave us no end of trouble discovering them. The most interesting period began with the drive to the east, when firing almost ceased, and it was a case ofplain sightseeing. The people lined the roads and streets making it a long parade. During the days that we spent in this fashion, numerous bottles of cognac and wine, bouquets, and apples made the convoys look quite gay and festive. Boulogne, Calais and Cap Gris Nez meant more firing, and I had a glimpse oi Dover from the coast one day-a very beautiful sight. The Scheldt Estuary brought us mud and rain, two very stolid companions that have caused us more grief than any of the enemy's ingenious concoctions. A rest in Ghent was our first break since D-Day, and a week's leave in England seems to be approaching very shortly. I hope the New Year sees the end to this war and a return to our homes. Please give my regards to the Staff. I. L. C.A.O. CRLF. Sth October 19-I-I. am writing this as I sit huddled in my little Casa f they are all Casas , whether they be slit trenches or Roman mansions. My particular brand of Casa is a trench about six feet by five feet by three feet deep - over this I pitch my tent and around it I build a fairly substantial wall to Cal keep out the water, and tbl give me a bit more protection against other forms of misery. l9l

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FOR THE SCHOOL YEAR 19-H-1945 The other thought that worries me, at any rate, is the relationship between the returned soldier who has been separated from his home and loved ones for five years, living a pretty miserable existence, exposing his life to all kinds of lreali dangers and the civilian who has been living off the fat of the land and getting paid as much for one hour's work as the soldier gets for twenty-four. I am afraid that a lot of conscience stricken civilians being aware of this discre- pancy will take the usual course of inferiority complex and start boasting to the returned soldiers of all the wonderful work they have been doing. And conversely soldiers are bound to boast to civilians. The results are undoubtedly going to be bad. I feel that Canada's future is .ieopardized by this unfortunate racial problem. One thing about this army life, one gets a great cross section of Canadian opinion. The rest of Canada feels very bitter towards Quebec and I'm sure that Quebec with the same type of inferiority complex as I mentioned before, will return that bitterness with interest. The answer to this last problem muff be found and found soon or it will be too late. W'hat on earth is the answer F The first obvious step is to instal a sound, fearless and unseltish Parliament. To this end every decent thinking Canadian must work hard to see that the right person is elected. The second obvious step is for the system and standard of education throughout Canada to be revived and raised - particularly in P.Q. The third step, perhaps not so obvious, is for a system of compulsory military train- ing for one year, say from sixteen to seventeen, to be introduced. Call it something elseg if you like, physical education. In any event take the youth of Canada, and send them to camps well away from their own homes where they can mix with lads from the other provinces g give them physical, scholastic, trade, etc., training for one year, and the benefits to Canada as a nation would be untold. No exceptions whatsoever except cripples M weak- lings to be sent to camps where training is less rigorous. The fourth step is to fsomehowi tackle the churches and religious institutions. Surely the seat of all our world wide troubles today is in the lack of charity shown by all of us. Is charity, therefore, not worth cultivating on a world wide basis and are the various institutions not the best equipped theorelirallv to teach us charity ? Yvestern religions in any event aren't teaching us charity in my opinion. In the first place they are setting us an extremely poor example by the everlasting squabbling between the various sects-they muff find some common doctrine and pull together. After all there are no real differences in the beliefs of the R.C. Church, the C. of E., etc. In the second place the Christian belief must be modernized if it is to appeal to modern people and if it doesn't appeal it will fail. YYhat is the purpose in telling a person in one breath about certain miracles and in the next breath showing him how and why these mir- acles are impossible ? I believe in Christ and in his teachings. I believe in the spirit of Christianity but I don't believe in a lot of biblical stories axfatfx, I believe in them as morals. YVhy not obviate these discrepancies then by modernizing our various religions- Illl