Les debarquements: How I came to appreciate Remembrance Day in a whole new way

My carefree summer days of jumping through sprinklers and hanging out at the 7-Eleven came to an end when I turned 14. That summer I was expected to get a job. So I got one --  an unpaid one. It would become one of my most memorable teenage summer experiences.

I figured the best way to build my CV was to volunteer. Off I went to the University of Alberta Hospital and signed up for volunteer shifts as the trolley girl (the one who sells candies and glossy magazines), helping out at physiotherapy sessions and hanging at the veterans' centre.

Volunteering at the hospital seemed like it would be a no-brainer, requiring only four hours a day, several times a week.

While I pushed my trolley brimming with goodies around the floors at the main hospital, I met new moms whose rooms were bursting with flowers, cards and cuddly toys, and sullen young men lying in their beds with vice grips on their heads -- victims of paralyzing accidents. They projected anger and bitterness. Since they didn’t desire interaction, it was easy to look past them. What I wasn’t prepared for was the veterans' centre.

Unlike the bustle at the main hospital, the veterans' centre had an uncanny calm. It felt like a morgue. No one spoke much, not even the staff.

At the beginning of each shift, I would don my green volunteer jacket and be introduced to a veteran with whom I would spend two hours, just visiting.  There weren’t many volunteers at the centre, which made it an even lonelier task. The veterans were starving for attention. Some were happier than others. You could tell from their bedside desks, which were decorated with birthday cards, flowers or recent photos of their grandkids. Others had very little on their bedside tables and they were cantankerous.

‘You don’t wanna know that stuff’

When I would take my veteran out of his room in his wheelchair, I felt like the Pied Piper as others would trail out of their rooms and follow us. They would surround me and launch into talking all at once.

“I tell you, that nurse outta’ be fired….”

“What are they teaching you these days at school?”

“Did you know about…”

Most were Second World War veterans but when I asked about the war, many would clam up: “You don’t wanna’ know that stuff.” Others would just stare at me.

Unaccustomed to being the sole entertainment for a bunch of seniors, the visits exhausted me.

That was the first and last time I worked as a volunteer for my summers. After that summer, I got paying jobs. They included slinging lasagna at the mall food court, working as a cashier at the “Submarine Adventure” and photocopying and stapling reports at an office job with the Alberta government. The reality is, those were the real no-brainer jobs.

More than a decade after my hospital summer, I finally came to understand the profound scars afflicting those veterans and realized just how much my occasional appearances meant to them.

Les debarquements

I was 25 and living in France, taking an immersion course in Angers, west of Paris. One of the first things my French landlady said to me when I arrived at her doorstep -- she knew I was Canadian -- was about “les debarquements.”  With my poor high school French, I failed to recognize the word. I smiled wanly as she babbled at me.

Two months later, the school organized a trip to the beaches of Normandy. I signed up and learned a lot about “les debarquements.”

On Juno Beach, the tour guide gave us a brief history of D-Day. It didn’t take much imagination to conjure up the terrifying anticipation of waiting out at sea, sick and hungry, about to hit the beaches, knowing that you and your comrades would become cannon fodder. They were part of  “les debarquements” -- the landings.

The toughest part for me was the video shown at the war museum in Caen. The footage shows Canadian soldiers taken prisoner by German troops at Dieppe in August 1942. Of the more than 5,000 Canadian soldiers taking part in the Dieppe raid in northern France, about 1,000 died and only 2,000 returned to England. The rest became prisoners of war.

The film runs on repeat in my head. I can still see those Canadian soldiers – boys essentially -- with their vanquished faces, uniforms torn to shreds, some almost naked and others in obvious pain, leaning on fellow soldiers for support. It is the walk of the defeated. Unbearable to watch, tears rolled down my face.

Half a world away, my summer with the veterans came rushing back to me. What is it like to do battle in fields of fire, face the spectre of death and free the world from tyranny only to end up in a veterans' centre 50 years later, forgotten and left in isolation?  It’s a no-brainer. Just like new mothers, veterans also deserve cards, flowers and most of all, visitors.

It’s not enough to say thank you. You have to show it.