The Communist's Daughter by Dennis Bock Page A

transported by lorry or tram to the Field Ambulance, where they were further cared for and eventually shipped in the space of a day or two to the clearing hospitals near the French ports, or maybe as far away as Merry Old England, if they were lucky enough to find themselves wounded out of the war.

    As I say, I attempted to maintain an optimistic tone in these letters regarding my own situation, on occasion hinting at the fear and anxiety and harsh conditions, hoping that the censors would not interfere; but for the most part I wrote of my longings for home and study and the company of my family and the north woods. These letters gave me great respite and were a forum for my dreams to run free, a release from the tedium and filth and death all around me. As if from a well I drew memories of camping and fishing trips and clear air and even the confines of Edgely, Ontario, where I’d learned a thing or two about the strength of will and learning to fight with your fists. I always signed my letters “Yours with love,” and those I received with such anticipation began in my mother’s hand “Our dear son” or my father’s “Dear Norman.” Those words alone often provoked tears and I felt an impossible distance separate me from my family. It was like reading a book from a century past, with every paragraph registering the irrecoverable years and miles. Upon opening a letter, I sometimes found a man hiding behind his cloth. “Dear Norman,” he would write, “It will do you good to remember the Lord’s words in times like these. Every day I pray for your safe return:

    Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night;
nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness;
nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday.”

    And with a definitive Amen, your grandfather would hurriedly sign off like a man late for his own sermon.

    Of course, I preferred your grandmother’s letters, filled with news of my brother, Malcolm, and sister, Janet, and of the precocious children in her Sunday School class and talk of neighbours and their pride that I was here in the fight as all good boys must be. Some letters I saved while others were lost in the chaos of those days. I remember clearly one in which your grandmother wrote that they were pinning white feathers onto the lapels of able-bodied men back home. “A league of women who make it their business to meddle,” she said, and went on to describe rallies in Toronto. Though my mother was no warmonger—nor was my father, certainly—their letters were predictably patriotic. Such thinking had become almost like breathing, I supposed. I did not think badly of this, only saddened on occasion that people should have such strong opinions of things which they knew so little about. Here we saw the fighting through a different lens. We did not see “war” but only a few hundred yards of nothing, beyond which were men who wanted to kill us. It was nothing like this present war in China, since we had no ideals other than to avoid death.

    In an attempt to entertain ourselves, we sometimes read aloud our letters from home—the funny or pleasant bits, in any case. When I read my mother’s account of the women and their white feathers, a young French literature major from the University of Toronto made a smart remark about those old biddies taking after the decadent scatologist Rabelais and employing their white feathers in a more useful manner.

    The same day I saw Robert, who’d been sent to the Aid Station after cutting his hand while sharpening a bayonet. I wrapped him up, it was not serious, and sat talking with him afterwards. He seemed peaceful and said, “Does this mean I’m going home?”

    â€œIt’s not up to me, Farmer,” I said, “but it’s not likely. You have to be hurt worse than that.”

    He nodded. “That’s all right, Beth.