Six faces will be on one local soldier's mind this Remembrance Day when he, in his black boots and green beret, observes a moment's silence with the nation.
Sergeant William Molloy will always remember April 8, 2007 - Easter Sunday.
He was crew commander in his platoon, when he watched the armored vehicle in front of his hit an Improvised Explosive Device. It marked the worst single-day loss of life for the Canadian army in Afghanistan to the date.
Sgt. Molloy says in that moment he focused on staying calm, on carrying out the standard operations procedure that fit the situation. His training, which he calls "outstanding," taught him to be prepared. "Be vigilant and always expect the unexpected," he recited from his office at the Land Forces Central Area Training Centre where he works as a training sergeant for the bravo company.
Today, November 11, 2009, he will remember them and think about their families,.
Sergeant Molloy will be thinking about the people who have given their lives for freedom, like his six comrades.
He will be thinking about the men and women who choose to don a uniform to protect this county, people like his grandfather, his uncle and his wife who is in Afghanistan right now.
"Without heroes that have given their lives for our country, we wouldn't be the country we are today," he said.
Duncan's World War II veteran
On a hill in the hamlet of Duncan in The Blue Mountains, a miniature Canadian flag marks the mailbox of a World War II veteran who dressed the wounds of his comrades and his enemies.
Ken Weller joined the army in 1942 and left his farm job in Stayner for training at Borden. He was trained as a medic and orderly.
After some months training out west, Weller joined 1,200 Canadians and even more Americans in the fight at the Aleutian Islands.
His outfit occupied Kiska after American bombs had forced the Japanese army to retreat. When exploring the terrain, Weller and a few others followed their Commanding Officer to a Japanese fortress dug into the side of a hill. He thought to skip the first step going in, but forgot to skip it on his way out and he was blown apart. No more soldiers bothered to explore the rest of the caves on the island.
Images of such intense trauma followed Weller across the Atlantic Ocean and into France shortly after the allies' victory at D-Day in Normandy.
When he and his outfit arrived at the beach they stayed the night in the boats - 200 soldiers on each made for a crowded ship.
In the morning German U-boats and aircrafts attacked the boats. Bullets hit the metal roof of Weller's boat - the sound of near misses. And when the air was clear, Weller's first glance outside was to see the boat next to his destroyed by a torpedo.
Weller, who was part of the 9th Field Dressing Station (9th FDS), would set up stations in the field behind the front lines. Wounded soldiers would come to the station, be dressed and return to the fight. If the wounds were more serious they were sent further back to the hospital. Later, Weller was transferred to the hospital where he earned a certificate as a nursing orderly.
One particular day, following a long and gruesome battle, the medics came over a hill to see a parking lot full of stretchers carrying wounded soldiers - many already dead.
He remembers a few patients. One man lost his arms at the elbows and legs at the knees. One had shell shock so severe he refused to remove his metal helmet and he jumped out of bed and hid under it at any loud noise.
There were some German soldiers taken to Weller's hospital. He says they were all very nice men, except for one.
He remembers a broad shouldered, angry SS soldier, one of Hitler's special Nazis.
"They hated us something awful," said Weller.
He was shot in the chest and brought in for care. Even as nurses and doctors dressed his wounds, he stared at them with eyes like daggers.
Weller was assigned to watch him while the doctor tended to the others. The SS soldier sat unmoving in his bed until finally pushing himself up, flopping out of bed and dying.
Weller and the 9th FDS followed the Canadians, Brits, Americans and others through France with a quick break in Paris, then onto Belgium and Holland where he celebrated the end of the war with the liberated Dutch.
Weller returned home some time after the war and bought the farm in Duncan across from the farm where he was born.
On a recent trip to Sunnybrook hospital in Toronto, he walked past a patient in a wheelchair who lost his arms at the elbows and his legs at the knees. He still wonders if it was the same chap he cared for overseas.
All this week and today at the cenotaph, he's thinking about what went on in France and Belgium and back in that hospital.
"I can't help but think about those guys," he said.
On November 11, he hopes that all those at the cenotaph next to him remember their free country.
"Just be thinking about those guys who lost their lives and the badly wounded," he said. "We could be in someone else's hands right now and who knows what we'd be doing."
Meaford's Veterans from wars past
A friend at Auschwitz
Three veterans, strangers in the morning, instant comrades at noon, drinking coffee together in a small café in Meaford remember terrifying scenes, heart wrenching loss and days as long as weeks - memories they say they would never trade.
Today, November 11, 2009, they will silently replay those memories; they will see the faces of their fallen chums and, as they do everyday, thank God for another day.
Jack Patterson, now 94 and a retired TD bank manager living in Meaford, was a navigator in the Air Force.
When he bows his head for a moment of silence he thinks of Franz Irving, the Jewish man he met at a concentration camp.
Patterson wore a British uniform the day he and the others in his plane were shot down over Germany.
He and another bailed out and evaded capture for ten days, calling on Dutch households at nighttime for food and drink.
Eventually, Patterson was sent by railway boxcar to a Prisoner of War camp near Breslau. For two years he stayed there with two other "air force chaps" and together they plotted escape. The three traded identities with others slated to be taken out of the camp to work at another. Patterson became Sammy Chrichton and headed for what is now known as Auschwitz.
During a lunch break, while taking cover in a shelter while Italian based U.S. bombers targeted Auschwitz area, Patterson met Franz Irving, a Jewish schoolteacher from Berlin. Patterson soon learned that Irving was taken from his wife and two young children by Nazi's and brought to the concentration camp. He hadn't heard any news of his family since, but didn't dare hope for their survival.
For a while Patterson and Irving met up regularly. Irving taught the soldier German and Patterson brought the Jewish prisoner any food that he could spare.
"I like to think that, perhaps these meetings helped to make his hard struggle to exist a little more bearable," wrote Patterson, several years after the war.
In January1945 the evacuation of Auschwitz was accompanied by the sound of Russian Artillery not far away.
While marching a long hard road from Auschwitz to Germany, Patterson saw the bodies of Jews and others, emaciated and clad in striped uniforms with a shaved head and a beret lying in the ditch along the road where they marched. Whether or not Irving was among the dead, Patterson can't say. He wrote to him after the war at an address where Irving's Uncle lived in Australia. He didn't hear back.
In dangerous waters
Meaford resident and World War II veteran Naval soldier, William "Bill" Payie says he touches his toes 30 times every morning and if he feels especially good he does it 40 times. When he goes to sleep at night, he thanks God for another day.
As a naval communications petty officer in the war making $31 a month at the beginning he remembers a battle off the coast of France during one of the 1,615 days he spent in dangerous waters, according to his decommission slip.
This particular day, his ship had contact with a submarine, but was on standby while a British ship was supposed to engage in combat.
Not 15 minutes went by and a torpedo blew off the ship's stern, killing 60 men.
Payie's ship had to leave the battle scene, but returned six hours later to pick up survivors.
Payie and the crew picked 32 survivors from the water and he gave his bed to a man whose legs had been nearly torn off in the blast. Payie knew the fate of the man in his bed could easily have been his own.
"I guess I hit it lucky in my life," he said.
Payie remembers his brother, an airman shot down on November 22 1942.
"He was 25 and I was 22," said Payie, wiping a tear from his blue eyes.
Payie says November 11 is special to him because it is so close to the day his brother died. That's the first face he sees during the moment of silence.
Digging a deeper trench
Billy Williams ran away from home in Nova Scotia and lied about his age to enlist in the Canadian Army at the age of 15.
He remembers knowing only one thing - how to shoot. As a child he shot squirrels in the eye and traded their skins for a nickel. He thought he could use that skill in the army.
He was fighting in Korea at age 16.
"The trenches weren't deep enough," he said. Williams remembers digging into a hill with a valley in front and no man's land surrounding them. There wasn't room to move, and the fighting was unceasing.
"I always dug my trench a little deeper," he said to the two World War II veterans sitting with him at the table. "I was terrified."
A day in Korea was like a week - noon marked the regular rocket shower from the enemy.
"We lost a lot of guys we shouldn't have... it was a losing battle" he said. "But it was nothing to be ashamed of, we were just trying to be helpful."
The 75-year-old former Land Sergeant now works at Binkley Apples in Thornbury. He lives in Meaford and never buys green bananas. He counts each day a blessing, knowing he could have met a fate the same as those he fought beside.
Though he was terrified and young he has good and bad recollections of Korea, Williams says memories are something he'll never lose.
"I wouldn't trade my memories for nothing," he said.
Observing his moment of silence today, Billy Williams will be thinking of "all the ones that we've lost and the ones we're losing today."
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