Imagine fighting Nazis on a war ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
Douglas Glebe was only 18 when he was plucked straight off the Canadian prairies and went to war in 1943 — old enough to fight and die, but too young for a shot of medicinal rum for the perpetual sea-sickness he experienced.
We’re glad to hear he found a few shots here and there though and we’re fortunate to be able to salute him and his fellow veterans this Remembrance Day.
This year marks a full century since the end of the First World War, the Great War, or the “war to end all wars,” as H.G. Wells put it, in the hopes it would eradicate the kinds of governments and attitudes that caused wars.
But roughly two decades later along came the National Socialists (not actually socialists) and because of their beliefs in racial purity and brutal Germanic superiority, upwards of 60 million people died in the Second World War, including 43,000 Canadians, who we salute with our poppies and our somber celebrations every Nov. 11.
It’s hard now to even imagine that our entire way of life — democracy, free speech and freedom of religion — were on the table.
The word Nazi is thrown around as casually as any other these days, but do most really know just how repugnant they were?
We should reserve the term for the actual Nazis and the fascists that are ever-increasingly popping up and lurking in the darker corners of the world, especially the Internet, and politics on the fringes of both the left and the right — they will make themselves a problem, if ignored.
Remembrance Day isn’t just about honouring the fallen. It’s about survivors like Mr. Glebe and his fellow soldiers who saved the western world from tyranny.
We owe them everything.
So wear a poppy, attend a Remembrance Day ceremony and observe a minute of silence.
It’s the least we can do to pay tribute to the greatest generation.
