And No Birds Sang
“*It is sweet and proper to die for one’s fatherland.
ON THE SECOND DAY OF September, 1939, I was painting the porch of our clapboard house in the rural Ontario town of Richmond Hill when my father pulled into the driveway at the helm of his red convertible. He looked as if he might have had a drink or two—high-coloured and exhilarated.
“Farley, my lad, there’s bloody big news! The war is on! Nothing official yet, but the Regiment’s been ordered to mobilize, and I’m to go back in with th...e rank of major, bum arm and all. There’ll be a place for you too. You’ll have to sweat a bit for it, of course, but if you keep your nose clean and work like hell there’ll be the King’s Commission.”
He spoke as if he was offering me a knighthood or, at the very least, membership in some exceedingly exclusive order.
Slim, wiry and sharply handsome, my father still carried himself like the young soldier who had gone off in 1915 to fight in the Great War, fired by the ideals of Empire—a Soldier of the King—one of those gay young men whose sense of right, of chivalry, was to bait them into the uttermost reaches of hell.MoreLess
ON THE SECOND DAY OF September, 1939, I was painting the porch of our clapboard house in the rural Ontario town of Richmond Hill when my father pulled into the driveway at the helm of his red convertible. He looked as if he might have had a drink or two—high-coloured and exhilarated.
“Farley, my lad, there’s bloody big news! The war is on! Nothing official yet, but the Regiment’s been ordered to mobilize, and I’m to go back in with th...e rank of major, bum arm and all. There’ll be a place for you too. You’ll have to sweat a bit for it, of course, but if you keep your nose clean and work like hell there’ll be the King’s Commission.”
He spoke as if he was offering me a knighthood or, at the very least, membership in some exceedingly exclusive order.
Slim, wiry and sharply handsome, my father still carried himself like the young soldier who had gone off in 1915 to fight in the Great War, fired by the ideals of Empire—a Soldier of the King—one of those gay young men whose sense of right, of chivalry, was to bait them into the uttermost reaches of hell.MoreLess
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