Come Back To Me- #FridayPictureShow & Ghost Flower #FridayFictioners

My Entry for the

The #FridayPictureShow Week 3

It was an old and abandoned wooden rollercoaster track but he remembered how he and Betty had flown down the tracks, she cuddling closer to him in fright. Was it so long ago that he was a teen before he come back from the war? Betty had married another when she had heard he was dead and he heard her husband had died. He hadn’t married and now he was old and alone. He heard a sound behind him and turned around.

“Harold?”

“Betty?”

“It’s about time you came back to me soldier.” Betty said taking him in her arms.

©Sheilagh Lee  November 11 ,2011

100 words

100-word Flash #FridayFictioneers

    Robert couldn't believe it was Remembrance Day yet again. Here he was again at Mary’s grave. Mary had worked as a mechanic during the war. It was supposed to be a safe job but bombers had killed her. He missed her every day but life had moved on. Mary had said if anything should happen to her he would know she was safe in heaven if he saw a ghost flower on her grave and every year like clockwork it bloomed.And every year he laid the poppy on her grave.

©Sheilagh Lee  November 11 ,2011

91 words 
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Just a little information Seventy-one women in the Canadian military died during WWII.We shall not forget.

We Shall Not Forget

Three Word Wednesday- The Second World War and my Dad

Drank; past tense of drink, verb: Take (a liquid) into the mouth and swallow; consume or be in the habit of consuming alcohol, especially to excess.

Hitch; verb: Move (something) into a different position with a jerk; fasten or tether with a rope; noun: A temporary interruption or problem.

Muster; verb: Assemble (troops), esp. for inspection or in preparation for battle; collect or assemble (a number or amount); summon up (a particular feeling, attitude, or response); noun: A formal gathering of troops, esp. for inspection, display, or exercise.

     My father was a history buff and his favourite field of studies were strategies of war. He often told us stories of Canadian battles and other historical battles. Canada was at war when he was a teen. He trained at school every day as part of his studies to go to war. A crack shot, my dad excelled at all to do with war; after all his older brother had become a Special Forces soldier and his sister also taking part working as a CWAC. He wanted to go one day too. His brother came home drank and told of fun with comrades but never really talking of war. It all sounded wonderful to a lonely boy. His mother worked long hours in the airplane factory, so my father too wanted to do his part .So he went down to the local recruiting centre and signed up to muster off to war while his mother worked  one of her very long shifts at the factory.
His father and stepfather were both fighting overseas. He was thirteen years old, but big for his age. Looking at him he may have appeared to the recruiter to be sixteen, but no one would have taken him for only thirteen years old.
     My grandmother meanwhile frantically tried to find out where her son was and got nowhere. She told the recruiter her son was only thirteen years old and he didn’t believe her. Maybe it was just he was worried about his mistake; after all he had just sent a thirteen year old child to war. He demanded she bring back proof. My grandmother had moved several times since my father was born and she was not sure where she had put his birth certificate. She found it after frantically searching and brought it back to them, only to be told that my father had been trained and shipped off to Halifax to board a troop ship which would take him overseas. My grandmother didn’t hesitate she boarded a train to Halifax went straight to the harbour. She told them proudly how her son fought overseas, her daughter was a CWAC and that she herself worked in an airplane factor, therefore they could not have her thirteen year old son. They demanded proof that my father was thirteen and she produced it. The ship then sailed without my father who went home. That ship my father always told me went to sea without him and later a German U boat  torpedoed them , all about 200 souls or less aboard died. (I’ve been trying to trace the ship but am not sure of the name only that it sailed from Halifax.)
     My father was always grateful that he wasn’t on board that ship. He mourned the loss of those lives and taught his children to remember those who had given their lives for our freedom and peace we enjoy. As he said he could have been one of those who perished and then we might not have been here. We appreciated that and always remember how fortunate we were to have our father.
      Less than a year later my grandmother had a knock at her door receiving a telegram that her oldest son  had been listed as missing in action and presumed dead. A soldier in his unit that was wounded came a month later and told her he was sure her son was dead; but that he had died valiantly saving many of his troops. My grandmother mourned devastated that she had saved one son to lose another. After three long months she received a phone call and rejoiced her son was alive. He had been in a coma for three months injured so badly they had not been able to identify him. They had thought they might lose him from his injuries but he survived. He came home for some time healing and then went back to war just before hostilities had ended.

©Sheilagh Lee  November 9, 2011

We shall never forget their sacrifice.We shall remember.

Remembrance Day Poem-We Remember.

Young men eager to start an adventure

As they face their greatest fear

To leave kith and kin without censure

To fight the greatest foe

Off to the front, the war they go

The young and the older leave their families,

Going to foreign lands, they take their leaves,

Women volunteered and were put behind the scenes

To bandage the weary troops and keep the papers forwarded

With the orders down the line, and to keep the troops boarded

They stepped up those valiant women with none rewarded

The men the battle waged, battling falling in foreign land

Some in lonely countryside, some in Dieppe’s watery sand

Their youth, the strength given for their country

So we can have freedom to live and breathe and see

A world of peace and feel that we are free

To speak our minds and raise our families

They gave their lives their body and mind

To save our country, to give us time to find

Our place in the world without oppression

To save us from someone else obsession

Who wanted to control the world and control thought

So our troops volunteered and so valiantly fought

Giving to us their country the peace we sought

We thank them for their sacrifice                             

Though it barely does suffice

We thank them for the time they gave

We thank them for the lives they save

We thank them truly, for the battles fought

The battles won, for the peace we sought

We remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice

Though our thanks barely suffice

And those that come home broken

We give to all of you this token

Of our love and remembrance

For every day that is hence

We will remember and celebrate your life

We remember how you had such strife

To give us freedom and peace

To let the hostilities cease.

Thank-you is all I can say

Thank you each and every day.

We shall not forget.

Though the sunset

We shall always remember

Each and every day

And not only in November

Of the role you played

And the sacrifices you made

Our memories will never fade.

©Sheilagh Lee  November 6 ,2011