World Wars I and II and the Korean War happened so long ago now that it can almost seem as if they didn’t happen at all. Yet I’ve realized through the years that I am sort of a product of World War II. Not that I was part of the war, but that I was born because it ended.
I was born in 1946, just after the end of World War II, which tells me, as well as you, that I had nothing to do with the war. But that’s not totally true, because I am a product of the war. Not because it happened, but because it ended.
For all of us born in ’46, most of us at least, were conceived in ’45 and many of us just after the war had ended. Being an August baby, counting back nine months, the normal gestation period for us humans, I was conceived in November of ’45.
What had happened just before that? Yes, of course, the war had just ended. A good time to have kids, if kids were in your plans. The world would be a nicer, kinder, safer place to raise a family.
Which means that anything people of my generation write about the war probably means that we are trading on other people’s stories. It’s all we can do. And there’s a lot that we don’t know about the war.
One of the questions that I have always had is this: why did people ever enlist? The answer in some people’s minds is that they didn’t enlist – they were drafted, they didn’t have any choice.
That isn’t true. Canadian soldiers, in both world wars, enlisted by the thousands. Conscription, as military drafts are called, did not come into force in Canada during WWI until 1917, and the war ended in 1918, so most of the recruitment for that war was strictly voluntary. And during WWII, there was no draft at the beginning of the war in 1939, and when it did begin in 1940, it was for home defence only as opposed to being drafted for service in Europe.
So while conscription was not part of filling the ranks in the early part of the war, many people had enlisted voluntarily. But how many is many? It’s a lot.
By the end of ’39, the first year of the war, over 65,000 people had already enlisted. By May of 1944, the number had grown to over 765,000.
Those were voluntary enlistments.
So why would they have joined the military service voluntarily? Especially at a time of a raging war?
Of course, there is more than one answer to that question.
Perhaps the most admirable of those answers is simply patriotism, the feeling of responsibility toward one’s country. That would not have been something that would have arisen in people’s minds in a day or two. Hitler had been causing trouble in Europe for many years, throughout much of the 1930s. People had time to think. And to decide what they would do to help defend our freedoms.
Many enlistments also arose simply because of a desire for adventure. Following the depression of the ’30’s a large number of primarily young men would have been willing to take some risks in their lives in order to escape the monotony of life with little excitement.
Then, there was also just the economic opportunity. The depression had meant that many people had been without work, without a stable income, for a long time, and joining the military would have been a solution to that issue.
So there were many reasons why people would enlist.
But if there were reasons why people would enlist, why would people enlist not once, but twice?
Let me tell you a little story.
He didn’t live in Golden at the time; he had grown up in the Innisfail, Alberta area, so this is really an Alberta story, but he later lived much of his life here in our area.
Many of us knew Walter Kemp.
Walter was in the second-hand auto parts business here for many years, with car bodies stored at yards in the area of Merc Flooring in town, between Highway 95 and the Columbia River halfway between Golden and Nicholson, and on North Bench later on.
And I should probably tell you that this story is dependent on Walter’s memory in telling it to me and on my memory in telling it to you.
But as I remember it, when he was younger, probably about sixteen, too young to enlist, he lied about his age and got himself into the Canadian army. He spent several months in service, basic training and that sort of thing, and then got thrown out when the army eventually discovered his real age. He waited a few months and then enlisted again and, for a second time, was found to be too young. That time, however, he was within a month or so of reaching enlistment age, and so they let him stay.
When the war ended, Walter stayed in the military as a career soldier and was sent to Korea during that war and, as I understand it, was there until that war ended.
So some people, many thousands, enlisted once. A much smaller number would have enlisted twice, but they all played an important part in giving many of us the freedom that we have enjoyed for a lifetime. Many men, many women. A large number in active theatres of war, others in support roles here in Canada, and another large group in the merchant marine transporting supplies to the active fronts, and certainly others as well.
We owe them all.
