Ray Lewis’ voice quivers slightly. His lips tighten and his eyes glisten with moisture.
The St. Albert resident doesn’t like to exhume the past. However, the Second World War veteran vividly remembers an exploding mortar shell slicing his leg open. He was crouched in a ditch and was backing up when blood start spurting.
“I couldn’t feel it at first. There was so much dirt falling all over,” says Lewis.
He was shipped off to a military hospital for treatment and convalescence. But a friend who replaced him wasn’t so lucky and was killed. Sixty-five years after the war, there is still a residue of unspoken guilt, “It could have been me.”
Lewis is one of 65 Canadian veterans chosen to retell their exploits for We Were Freedom: Canadian Stories of the Second World War, a book published by Key Porter of Toronto through the Memory Project archive. In total about 1,400 veteran profiles gathered between July 2009 and May 2010 are also being digitally archived as a legacy for future generations at www.memoryproject.com.
The stories reflect diverse Canadian experiences all told in the veterans’ own words. All branches of the service, ethnic and religious backgrounds, languages, military occupations and social classes are represented. One of the unique facets of this book is that profiles also include stories of veterans who are now Canadian citizens, even if they were not nationals during the conflict.
For Lewis, it was about letting his children and grandchildren understand the role he played in Europe’s liberation. “I knew what I had done. I was proud of what I had done and this was my chance to tell my story.”
Originally raised in Athabasca, the strapping teenager tried to enlist three times before his 18th birthday. The first two times, the ruse was discovered and he was sent home. “The war was on. Everybody wanted to do it. My father was in the First World War. His brother lost a leg in that war. His cousin was killed in Italy in December 1944.”
The third time, Lewis’ father, a quartermaster sergeant helped the 17-year-old enlist as a bugler. But he never played a note. Instead Lewis was sent to Currie Barracks in Calgary and was ordered to take a driving test. “Two weeks later I was instructing senior officers to drive trucks.”
He was sent to study motor mechanics at a Ford Company in Windsor, Ont. and learned to take apart and rebuild a variety of transmissions from little Jeeps to three-ton trucks.
In November 1943, he was shipped to Nova Scotia for several months before boarding Ile de France, a troop ship that carried 16,000 soldiers to Greenwich, Scotland. The first casualties were hit by seasickness. “It was all over and the stench was pretty bad.”
Lewis landed in Naples in March 1944. “We got off our ship and walked over a hospital ship laying on its side in the water. It was like a gangplank.”
The soldiers were taken to Avellino, a makeshift holding unit that was once a monastery before being assigned to the Westminster Regiment where Lewis manned a Bren gun carrier.
As the Allied Forces advanced north, the Germans retreated and Lewis was shipped to Marseilles and Danzig. When the Armistice was announced, he was stationed in Dilfzil, Holland. “War is a nasty business. The Dutch people were starving. They were eating tulip bulbs.”
“War doesn’t decide anything, but it’s been ongoing forever, and it will continue as long as there are men who want power and corporations who make huge profits.”
