Bluenose 1 and Nelson's Navy (3)

Bluenose 1, Nelson's Navy, Famous Stoker, Rug Beater 

At the beginning of his Navy memoirs, written in long-hand in 1975, my father writes the following:

[Bluenose, 1938: Photo credit Wikipedia Commons]

As  a young boy I was crazy about ships... My mother needed a new door sill for our home so she somehow procured a lovely board from the lumber yard. I stole the board and Sonny Bucholtz and I hollowed it out and used it for the main part of our first ship, the Bluenose. We got old car batteries, melted the lead and molded it to fit the bottom of the boat as a keel. Built masts and yardarms, made sails and halyards, and her maiden voyage at Vandenburg's swimming pool was a terrific success. She was painted blue and white.

In a later version of the story he adds a fateful conversation between himself and his mother. She asks about the board's whereabouts. He says it's in the sailboat. She claims she "saved and saved for that board." And my father concludes by recalling "the greatest pealing of my life ("I don't remember what she beat me with, maybe the rug beater"), but I lived and I loved my mother very much."

[Author's note: "A rug beater is much bigger than,

e.g., my mother's weapon of choice - a fly swatter"]

Apparently my father's love for ships was able to withstand a significant 'pealing', and, fortified by forgiveness, he reveals the basis of his love for ships and the sea just a few paragraphs later when he says he "always wanted to be a sailor because my dad, who passed away when I was ten, had been a sailor, and my idol was Admiral Lord Nelson. I read and read about him and many other navy stories, mostly about war actions. Zeebrugge was one. My dad had been a stoker for thirteen years."

[L - R: Roland Harrison (my father's brother), Kay F., my father Doug,

Roland Sr. and Alice Harrison (father's parents), Dave Tait (father's uncle)]

[Action at Zeebrugge, April 1918: Picture credit Memorials Portsmouth] 

Without a doubt one could say my father's head was turned toward ships and the sea at a very young age, even before his teen years and about 90 years ago, but there were more things astir in his mind, heart and stomach on the day in the early 1980s he declared he wanted to be buried at sea.

He joined the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve (RCNVR) as a young man 21 years of age, trained in Hamilton and Halifax, volunteered for the Combined Operations organization before participating in active duty, and trained on assault landing craft on beaches in Scotland and southern England in preparation for the raid on Dieppe and later invasions of North Africa, Sicily and Italy.

["My father 'lost his first mates at Dieppe'"]

He lost his first mates at Dieppe, faced enemy snipers while unloading barges on the shores of North Africa, witnessed "utter death and chaos" and lived inside caves in Sicily, wrote about the devastation of ports in Italy, and uttered hearty helloes and sad good-byes to more than a few girlfriends in the UK and sturdy pals in RCNVR. He returned to Canada in fit shape in December 1943, volunteered for more duties with Combined Operations, travelled to Vancouver Island and said it was heaven. And knowing my father, his memories were likely quite vivid and unshakeable, some in very good ways, others terrible.

["My father (left), Chuck Rose and other Navy boys played
some ball while stationed at The Spit on Vancouver Island"]

["My father and Chuck Rose at a Navy Reunion"]

Had he ever been asked to describe the emotional stew that drove the words 'I want to be buried at sea' from his mouth I'm sure he would have tried but failed. Fortunately, I didn't blame him then. I don't now. I won't ever. Those few words, along with the faint footsteps he produced in various places in Canada and abroad, have led me on some of the greatest adventures of my life.

Though I can now rattle off where he trained, served and drank pints with his friends while on leave in London in 1942, it hasn't been that way for long. I was very slow to pick up my father's trail.

Why, I didn't even bother to bury him at sea until seven years after his death.

More to follow.

Two credited photos
Other photos by GH

Link to Faint Footsteps WW2 (2)

Emotional Stew (2)

Emotional Stew in Father's Gut

["Happy days in the late 1970s at a family reunion"]

In the early 1980s, when my father declared whole-heartedly he wanted to be buried at sea, I didn't have much to say. I knew he had been in the Navy during WW2 and supposed his words were driven in some part by that experience, but a clearcut notion that I could somehow help him out didn't spring to mind. I think stunned silence ruled the day, except on my mother's side of the dining room table where she sat.

"What's going to happen to me?" she said. "Am I going to be buried alone?"

The tension turned thick that afternoon, as my mother made it clear she didn't want to be buried alone, that husbands and wives were supposed to be buried together, making me realize my parents hadn't discussed their last wishes regarding burial arrangements too fully before Dad laid claim to the sea in front of his startled witnesses.

I think today there were many reasons why my father wanted to be buried at sea, and those reasons worked together and created, about thirty years ago, some type of emotional stew in his gut. He thought long and hard about it, reacted deeply to it, and the words just spilled forth that fateful day, and damn the consequences.

["Both parents likely dealt with heavy doses of emotional stew"]

According to my father's Navy memoirs he was crazy about ships starting at a very young age. He writes, "I used to make boats by folding paper in a certain way and then sail them on the creek." I believe it. He showed me how to fold paper boats a certain way when I was quite a young boy, and as I recall, I didn't get the hang of it and stuck to my game of tossing twigs into roadside puddles or sticks into Little Otter Creek, west of the ball park in Norwich.

As well, more than once he recounts a story about how he stole a costly board from his mother and, with the help of pal Sonny Bucholtz, turned it into a fine sailing ship, the Bluenose.

More to follow.

Link to Fading Footsteps, WW2

Photos GH

I Want to be Buried at Sea (1)

I Want to be Buried at Sea 

[I attend a family reunion with my parents, Turkey Point, circa 1978]

I did not develop a strong interest in my father's 'Navy Days' until 2010. I can easily recall, however, a few specific events in the summer and fall of that year that opened the door to my search for details that continues strongly to this day. My father's interest in 'all things Navy' goes back much farther, to the early 1930s at the very least, and very likely the 1920s.

To assist with the process of going back about 90 years, I present a brief excerpt from 'Bury Me At Sea', a short story I composed and published recently:

- Early 1980s - 

As I recall, my wife Pat and I travelled from London to see my parents in Norwich, Ontario on a very lovely day, to have a Sunday visit and enjoy supper together under pleasant circumstances. Our two sons were old enough to send off to a nearby school ground to play on their own (and if they wandered downtown, less than two blocks away, that was fine too), a roast was in the oven, a store-bought pie was on the kitchen counter and cups of tea with cookies were offered and welcomed after the hour drive from our home to that of my parents, Doug and Edith.

Initially, the visit went perfectly well. It helped that, with my wife and I in our early thirties and my parents in their early sixties, an afternoon could be comfortably filled with lots of common small talk. We gabbed about the boys - we just had to look out the window to be sure that neither had fallen off the monkey bars and landed on his head - our family cars, changes to our houses. My teaching career was going well and so were the Blue Jays. Easy breezy afternoon, as some would say.

['Sailor's Statue' stands outside Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, Halifax] 

Then my father handed me a photo postcard of the 'Sailor's Statue' (Sackville St., Halifax) and said, very passionately, "I want to be buried at sea."

He could not have produced a more devastating effect on the conversation had he tossed a hand grenade under the dining room table where we sat. Pat and I didn't know what to say.

More to follow.

Link to Welcome to Faint Footsteps, WW2

Photos GH

Welcome to Faint Footsteps, WW2

Blog Background 2

 [Buryl McIntyre, Doug Harrison. RCNVR, Combined Operations, 1941 - 45]

Once I caught the bug and began to read and learn more about my father's WW2 experiences I realized I was a very fortunate man. Not only did I have 40 pages of his hand-written notes but several of the columns he'd written for his hometown weekly, the Norwich Gazette. And on my own bookshelf I discovered copies of books about Combined Operations, written by Canadian WW2 veterans, in which a few of my father's stories were included. Inside the front cover of one book was a list of page numbers, compiled by my wife, where I could find Father's contributions.

[Hand-written memoirs: Comments re invasion of Sicily, 1943.

"Shrapnel and bombs just rained down"]

I believe my father's story is a good one and will be of interest perhaps to more than a few people whose father or grandfather is also a war veteran. I can support some stories with photographs, thanks to my father and his willingness to list names and places on the back at times. I can support others with my own photos, taken during trips to Halifax, Vancouver Island and Irvine and Inveraray, Scotland, where a few precious, sometimes faint, reminders or artifacts still reveal that Canadian men and women served their countries in various war efforts.

[Stoker Katanna gave his hammock to SLt. Rodgers on their way to Sicily, 1943.

The hammock was returned in 1985, and resides in Navy Museum, Esquimalt, BC]

Developing and maintaining this site will likely be a gradual, lengthy process but in twenty years time it will be top rate. To guarantee success, I invite readers to submit their own stories, photographs, memoirs, and comments related to personal involvement in war activities or to involvement of family members. I will make every effort to display materials in an appropriate, thorough manner.

And to others who have 'caught the bug' I wish good sailing!

Gord Harrison

Link to Blog Background 1

Photos by GH

Welcome to Faint Footsteps, WW2

Blog Background 1

[Lt. McFetrick, C.O., and SLt. Galoway lead the class of '41

across the C.N.R. bridge on MacNab St., Hamilton, Ontario.] 

My father started his military march as a raw recruit in the Royal Canadian Navy Volunteer Reserve in Hamilton, 1941. He continued his training in Halifax, volunteered for the Combined Operations organization and soon marched in Scotland and England, where he prepared for the Dieppe raid and Allied invasions of North Africa, Sicily and Italy. Before completing his military march he served two years at a Combined Ops training camp on Vancouver Island. He was discharged on September 5, 1945, after declining the call to participate in the Pacific theatre of war, and one day before his 25th birthday.

Now, about seventy years after his discharge - 'honourable, with no black marks' - I am doing the marching, so to speak, as I follow his faint footsteps across Canada and abroad to learn more about his adventures, and to discover more about the man, now deceased, that I daily recall as a tireless, honest worker and good, supportive father. 

I am also doing a bit of writing related to my travels, research and discoveries as other children of war veterans have done before me. One might say I have 'caught the bug' after discovering my father's hand-written Navy memoirs in a tired-looking file folder in November, 2011. I read one page, then another, and because I was ready at the time to read more and dig deeper I did so. And I haven't stopped. 

'Caught the bug,' indeed.

Photo from HMCS Star, A Naval Reserve History

Photo donated by my father, Doug Harrison