Thirty-five thousand people surrounded the National War Memorial in Ottawa today to take part in this year’s Remembrance Ceremony. Many of the front-row seats around the War Memorial were occupied by veterans of our wars, particularly vets from the Second World War. Their numbers may be dwindling but their message is getting stronger. There is a real desire among the surviving vets of the Second World War to come to this Remembrance Day Ceremony to be the storyteller, the ‘reminder’ of why we must never forget.
92-year-old Jim Newell doesn't have to reach far back to open the wounds of his tortured memory of battles won, but friends lost.
‘I remember the guys who didn't make it, didn't come back,’ says Newell, ‘I lost five in one battle.’
Newell was a Captain with the Black Watch Regiment during World War Two, engaged in some of the most ferocious fights including Operation Plunder, the crossing of the River Rhine.
For 8 years, he has driven from Peterborough to attend the annual ceremony in Ottawa; the memories are always simmering at the surface.
‘When things are quiet and you can think,’ says Newell, ‘the tears come. They’re almost coming now.’
93-year-old Bruce Bullock was a radio operator during the war. He's the last of his friends now.
‘Oh boy, just to be able to make it at 93,’ says Bullock, ‘it’s something. I don’t know if I will make it here next year.’
According to Ottawa Police estimates, thirty-five people did make it to this year’s ceremony, wrapping around the War Memorial in one gigantic thank-you.
9-year-old Danielle Johnson’s father is currently in the military in Petawawa. She attended with her mother and made a sign for the vets saying ‘Thank You.’
‘We come every year to celebrate for the people who fought in World War One and World War Two,’ says Johnson.’
Ottawa resident Farrah Sanjari says, ‘It's important as young person to come out and show everyone else we do need to take time out of day to honor those who sacrificed for our country.’
Captain Derk Duermeyer was so indebted to the Canadian soldiers who liberated him as a young boy in Holland that he moved here.
‘I always wanted to be part of the Canadians and I joined the army 56 years ago.’
As painful as many of the memories are, there is humor, too. Sgt. Bill McLachlan, talks about the war being over too soon for him. He had served four years, was home before being deployed to Japan when the atomic bomb was dropped and the war ended.
‘Then I thought what can I do that's dangerous?’ jokes McLachlan, all too aware of the casualties the war had accumulated, ‘So I remembered that I had put a ring on a girl 2 years before in Nova Scotia. We've been married 70 years and she drove me up here today.’
