The Lost Folder (6)

The Lost Folder (1)

I have an old brown folder filled with rare treasure. It contains my father's hand-written navy memoirs. And I call it 'the lost folder' even though it was never really lost. I had it in my possession a long time but just didn't know what it contained.

For many years the brown folder sat behind a well-worn manilla folder containing copies of newspaper columns my father had written for his local newspaper. I tell about its discovery in the preface to "DAD, WELL DONE", a book I later assembled concerning my father's WW2 experiences.

     Preface:

     My dad, G. D. (Doug) Harrison (Sept. 6, 1920 - Feb. 6, 2003) contributed
     to the Norwich Gazette, his hometown weekly, for many years, and one day
     in the fall of 2011, while I looked for a particular article he had written (I
     needed a pithy quote for a Remembrance Day article of my own), I found
     a worn brown folder longing for attention. Though I knew it wasn’t what I
     was looking for, I opened it.

     Instead of a single quote about what motivated Dad to join the Merchant
     Marine, I found 46 hand-written pages - over 35 years old - that summarized,
     as well as he could remember (and he had a sharp mind up to his death), his
     involvement in World War 2. Accompanying the notes was a neatly typed
     21-page version of his familiar scrawl. I tipped my hat to my youngest sister,
     Jane Harrison, for her efforts, then set the folder aside. I wasn’t quite ready
     to dig into it. I had a deadline hanging - like a sharp Navy dirk - over my head.

     A month later I decided to gather his scattered memoirs into this small book,
     and realized soon after I began typing that I had started the task about nine years
     too late. The person I needed to talk to for more details, wanted to talk to about
     certain events, ask questions of or discuss a fine point with, was nine years dead
     and gone. Now that I want to ask, “Tell me where you were when ships were
     loading for Dieppe,” and am ready to hear the answer with some sense of
     appreciation, my dad inhabits another sphere.

     Many others will undoubtedly understand the hard lesson I learned as I typed.
     I’m certain I’m but one son in a long line of sons and daughters who waited too
     long to sit down with their parents to ask for the good, honest stories we’re now
     wanting to hear. Such is life, my dad would say.

     Fortunately, I have his hand-written memoirs, as well as his contributions to two
     books assembled by foresightful Canadian members of the Combined Operations
     organization and numerous articles he wrote and later clipped from the Norwich
     Gazette about his ‘Navy Days’. I share much of his work here.

I was 62 years of age when I put the book together and likely in some state of shock. How could 46 pages of hand-writtens memoirs have escaped my attention for so long? My hand must have skimmed over them at least a dozen times while I read his Gazette articles one after the other over the course of a few years.

Whatever the case, though the old lost folder still chides me about lost opportunities, I have it in a safe place and I've read the memoirs several times from front to back. I've written stories of my own about them, travelled with them and followed my father's trail of faint footsteps across Canada and to the United Kingdom. And I'm definitely not done with them. Only just begun.

More to follow.

Link to Faint Footsteps, WW2 (5)

Photos by GH