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HOLLAND
COLLEGE • April 29, 2003
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FEATURES
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| {Veterans
would rather talk about past wars  PHOTO:
Eugene McCabe (left) and Len Peters share gossip and stories at the
Royal Canadian Legion Charlottetown Branch One bar. Both men are veterans
of the Second World War.By Kevin Ross Surveyor Staff On the far left side of the lobby in the Royal Canadian Legion branch in Charlottetown a set of stairs leads the basement. Downstairs is a club which, on weekends, is home to the same kind of boisterous partygoers as any nightclub, but on this bright spring Tuesday morning the only sounds heard in the dark bar are the laughter and chatter coming from men playing cards in one of the game rooms. The walls are adorned with framed newspaper articles chronicling the world wars and pictures of famous military figures, including Eisenhower and Churchill. At the far left end of the room hangs a wooden sign, proclaiming the area the Fibber's Corner. At 11a.m., a group of men meet at the long table beneath the sign. There they sit, with drinks and pull-tab lottery tickets in hand, catching up on the news in each other's lives and sharing the gossip. As the tickets begin to pile up, the talk turns to war, but not the war in Iraq. These men are veterans who would rather talk about the Second World War. Eugene McCabe, a Charlottetown resident and regular at the Legion, recalls how he first became involved in the military. In 1937, a 14-year-old McCabe became a soldier-batman, running errands and looking after five senior officers. McCabe, now an age-weathered man with thinning silver hair, said he believed he was making good money, 10 cents per officer per day. "I made 50 cents each day and I think a sergeant in those days made about 40 cents a day, so I think I did pretty good," he said with a laugh. He pauses to light a cigarette, then continues. McCabe said he stayed a batman with the P.E.I. Highlanders until 1942 when he was sent to Dartmouth, then to Halifax. He was eventually transferred to Petawawa, where he took a course in engineering. He learned how to build and destroy bridges and handle mines. McCabe was sent to England that same year. He finished his engineering training and joined the 30th Canadian Field Engineers. He quickly put his training to use as his unit was sent to bridge gaps in the middle of the fighting. "We learned to build quickly, because the quicker we built, the quicker we got the hell out of there," he said, explaining his unit was building as other Allied soldiers fought off Germans near their position. Each bridge was a rush job, but each job was always well planned as his unit always carried supplies with them and had information on the rivers and cliffs before building. "We also rigged every bridge with explosives, so if the Germans tried to cross we could blow them to hell," he said. Fortunately, his unit never had to resort to that. He stops, puts out his cigarette with his thin hand, which is stained yellow with nicotine, and takes a drink from his glass. Beneath a thin veil of grey smoke, he begins to recall D-Day and the days that followed. At 9:30 a.m. on June 14, 1944, McCabe arrived on the beach at Normandy with the Ninth Allied Brigade. The next few hours would be the most hectic he's ever lived. "I was scared, everyone was. It was quite an ordeal," he said, in his low, slightly hoarse voice. The day was spent picking and laying mines. Amid the fighting, he just tried to focus on his job. The next few months were spent with the Allies pushing into France, fighting along the way. Much of his time was spent helping detect mines. He explains how a crew armed with metal detectors would sweep left and right to determine which spots were mine-free. McCabe would lay tape across the clean areas. "Those spots were our ‘safe zones,' but no area was really safe." Eventually, he and his troop made it to the Rhine River, blowing up anything in the way and bridging any gap. McCabe was in Endor, Germany when the news came of the German surrender. One of his fondest memories was being part of the team which built the bridge at Endor that allowed German officers to cross and formally surrender. "We worked all night at that bridge. We were awarded at the end with a drink of rum," he said. "Now, we were awarded with rum rations after each job, but I remember that one the most." When asked about the war in Iraq, McCabe and the other four men offer surprisingly little opinion. "The Americans are bound to make mistakes," McCabe said. "People like to say they (U.S.) are wrong, but they don't realize the contributions Americans have made in the past. We should respect their decisions." "I like to keep out of it," said Len Peters, a gentle grandfather-type. "I don't like to think about what's going on over there (Iraq)." J.R. Dowling, who seemed to be a very talkitive man, agreed. "I like to keep my opinions on Iraq to myself." The other two men at the table, Edgar Mirol and Lee Gill, didn't say much the whole time, but Mirol speaks up to say a radio reporter already asked him his opinions and he was a bit upset with the outcome. However, all five men said they would join the forces to fight in Iraq today if they could and if it became necessary. With that, the men turn back to their tickets and drinks and friendly talk. Ian Dowbiggan, history professor at UPEI, said it's no surprise some veterans will talk more openly about past wars than the Iraq sitaution. "It's hard to know what's actually happening in Iraq, so it's hard to comment on it," Dowbiggan said. "Those veterans would know more about the history of World War Two, because they were there, so they would feel more confident talking about it." Dowbiggan said if those same men were to fight in the Iraq war, they would find it a whole different experience from what they went through. "I think they would do fine, though. They would find Iraq to be much easier physically. They would have better food, better accommodations, they would be better taken care of." However, they would find this war more demanding in a psychological sense, he added. "As they say, war is five per cent boredom, 95 per cent terror. Now, war has become really a 24-hour-a-day job and you never know what to expect." Dowbiggan said guerrilla warfare and acts of terrorism, such as suicide bombing, are far more common in war today than in the past and sometimes it's hard to know who is supposed to be your enemy.} |
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