I had only seen him as an ordinary man, a grandfather. He had the requisite hobbies and love of complex card games common to other grandparents. There was nothing extraordinary about his appearance, but for one exception. On his left arm was a tattoo of a ship. Below it were the words “Homeward Bound.”
He was seventeen when World War II broke out on September 3, 1939. He lied about his age, so he could enlist in the Navy as soon as he could. He had broken his glasses, and neglected to mention that he was blind without them. He was overly enthusiastic about aiding the war effort, and nearly sunk the ship towing the target during target practice. Though he got a new pair of glasses, it was decided that he would best serve the Navy as a stoker. He kept the new glasses in his pocket, so this decision was for the best.
He left Guelph, for the first time in his life. He traveled to Montreal, then to Quebec City, Halifax and St. John’s, and finally sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to Londonderry, Ireland. In Ireland, George, nicknamed Red, became Ginger. I left Oakville, Ontario, in 2009, traveling alone for the first time to Dublin, Ireland. We were in the country of our ancestors, and heard the voices of other Canadians and of the world. It was our journey of self-discovery. At the end of the summer, I returned home to finish my last year of high school. My grandfather stayed in Ireland to start the first year of his service aboard the Flower Class Corvette H.M.C.S. Athol.
Early on in World War II, Canada’s was a poorly equipped navy. Needing more ships quickly, the Corvette was built. It was smaller, and maneuvered around U-boats more skillfully. The Corvettes were used to protect convoys transporting sailors, soldiers and supplies from Canada to Europe. The ship was built in Canada and was crossing over to England to have its guns attached. It crossed the Atlantic with nothing but wooden guns and a single depth charge. My grandfather worked with two other men as stokers. The job was perilous and essential. They were the men who kept the ship going, tending the engines in a cramped boiler room. If their ship was hit, they would have little chance of escaping. Death in the boiler room was seemed always possible, but the Athol made it to England without an attack. My grandfather and his fellow stokers got identical tattoos of sailing ships, with seagulls soaring overhead. Below the ship read “Homeward Bound.” They made it across the ocean, and the tattoos commemorated that and marked their lifelong friendship.
My grandfather turned twenty-one in the middle of the North Atlantic. He was twenty-one at sea, at war, far from home. He stayed at sea for the duration of the war; until the war was over, the only certainty in his life was the hot boiler room. He decided that death in the boiler room, doing his part for the Navy, was better than freezing in the North Atlantic. Now I am twenty-one, and I don’t know where the next year will take me. All I know is that I’m claustrophobic and I don’t like heat.
The Battle of the Atlantic continued, as German ships moved inland, towards the Gulf of St. Lawrence in 1942. The turning point was 1943, when Canadian ships started to sink German U-boats before they attacked, taking on a new offensive strategy, rather than the defensive stance they had taken before. Canada now had better technology and once they gained the upper hand, they had momentum on their side. Canada ended the war as the world’s third largest Navy. The Allies won the war in Europe and Canada won the Battle of the Atlantic. Twenty-four ships were lost in the process.
I often wondered if anyone my grandfather knew in the Navy died during the war. Eighteen hundred sailors died, and I was afraid to ask if he knew any of them. He thought often of the war and told stories – mainly of the happy times – to my father and his sisters. He died in 2003, at eighty-one, and I, at eleven, never got a chance to ask him all that I wanted to know.
He came of age during World War II. Royal Canada Navy came of age during the war too. After the war in Europe was over, he was prepared to fight in Japan. He returned home to Guelph with a medal for fighting in the Battle of the North Atlantic, and reflected on what he had experienced and where his future would take him. World War II was the end of his service in the Navy, but his connection to the Navy always remained strong. He attended meetings of the Royal Canadian Naval Association. The family, myself included, attended the annual Navy Picnic in Niagara Falls. In 2001, at the Battle of the Atlantic Memorial, at the fifty-sixth anniversary of the end of World War II, a poem was read written by a friend of my grandfather’s.
On all the ocean white caps flow
We do not have crosses row on row
But those who sleep beneath the sea
Rest in peace, because our country is free
Few of the brave men who fought in the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II are alive today. It is now up to their grandchildren to decide what we are going to do with our coming of age. The time has come for us to see if we are ready and willing to serve our country as the Navy so proudly did, or if our fears will keep us from acting in the name of freedom. Canada is calling with the voices of those who served. It is our time to answer.
Song of the Day: So It Goes by Hollerado, about lead singer Menno Versteeg’s grandfather and his experience as a Dutch soldier during the German occupation of the Netherlands in World War II.
