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FIGHT BACK

War medals

by Jeff Goodall

November 10, 2003

Some time ago, I wrote of one of my mother's first cousin who served in the Royal Navy during World War II. Mistakenly, I thought then that his ship, HMS Exeter, was on a training cruise in the Far East at the time of the attack on Pearl Harbour. In fact, it was he who was on a training cruise, and he had been assigned to the Exeter for that purpose in order to round out his experience and qualify him as a seaman. Additionally, my mother had thought that he was at the Battle of the River Plate, but it turns out that this was not so. Time can play tricks.

His sister recently moved into a home because of her advancing age. She asked that her brother's medals be sent to me, saying "Give these to Jeffrey, I know he'll appreciate them." So I recently received a photograph of her beloved brother, and a picture of his fellow-trainees, both taken in 1941 at HMS St. George, a wartime "land ship" on the Isle of Man. I was immediately struck by how young he and his companions were, just teenagers. He was 16- year's-old at the time.

No more than a year later, by then a "Boy Class 1", he had to abandon his ship under enemy fire during the Battle of the Java Sea in what is now Indonesia. He managed to survive a little over three years as a prisoner of war, before dying in July of 1945. If only he could have lasted another month, he might still be with us.

I haven't received his medals yet, due to a post office dispute in Britain. When they get here, I will assemble them together with photographs of he and his ship, and then have them mounted and framed. I will also be receiving his father's medals from The Great War, and they will be similarly processed.

I will also do the same with my father's medals. They are still in the box that they were mailed to him in. Like most people who served in wartime, my father never spoke that much about it.

When his medals arrived he took them out of their box, looked at them, and then put them away.

His uncle James served in the Royal Engineers during World War II as an NCO in a bomb disposal crew that cleared and prepared the area around unexploded bombs for the experts who would come and disarm them. He was called up for service later in the war due to his age, but served in France, Belgium and Holland doing his dangerous work. He never received his medals at all.

According to correspondence in my possession, after demobilisation he was asked to confirm details of his war service so that his medal entitlement could be established, but he never complied. Perhaps he was just glad it was all over, and didn't want them.

It would be easy for me to write in anger about how all those sacrifices are being wasted, and of how the freedoms that were purchased for us with so much blood and sacrifice are being trampled and destroyed, but not this time around. This should be a day of quiet pride and thankfulness.

I'll save the anger for November 12th.

Jeff Goodall worked for the Metro Treasury and City Finance Departments for 25 years, and served as a member of the CUPE Local 79 Executive Board for 14 of those years.