ne of the many fascinating personal memoirs of the Second World War in Volume 8 is that of Edmonton's Douglas Matheson, a Spitfire pilot shot down over France in December, 1943. With the help of the French resistance he eluded capture for two months, but eventually he was caught and found himself being interrogated by a Gestapo officer who spoke astonishingly good English. It turned out the officer had lived in Alberta during the 1930s, a fortuitous coincidence that probably saved Matheson from being declared a spy and executed. He spent the rest of the war as a POW and watched the Nazi regime crumble under the relentless advance of the Allied armies. After narrowly escaping death during a couple Allied bombing raids, he was shot in the legs by a trigger-happy guard, but he survived to return to Edmonton, build a successful law practice and eventually become a Court of Queen's Bench justice.
~
Cpl. Frank Moan of the South Albertas was discovered with a pig, apparently in defiance of orders not to loot civilian food supplies. But he insisted he came by it honestly. "That poor little pig was walking down the street and a shell dropped and split him from ear to ear," said Moan. "You wouldn't want to waste it, would you?"
~
|
The War that United the Province is divided into four sections. The first, titled "The Losing War," includes chapters about the fearful early days of the war, including the calamity at Dieppe that decimated the Calgary Tanks, the fall of Hong Kong (and the horrible suffering of the troops taken prisoner by the Japanese) and the battle in the North Atlantic that pitted German U-boats against Allied ships manned to a surprisingly degree by prairie boys. Section Two chronicles life on the Home Front—training pilots on the prairies, building the Alaska Highway, the contribution of women in factories, farms and the forces, internment of the Japanese Canadians and the ill-fated experiment at Patricia Lake in Jasper Park to build warships out of ice.
Section Three looks at "The Politics of War" and climaxes with "Pain, Death and Victory," which includes detailed accounts of the battles involving Alberta regiments in Italy, France, Holland, Belgium and Germany. It also recalls how Canadian governments did much more to help returning soldiers return to civilian life than had been done for veterans of World War One. Finally, WWII vets interviewed late in the 20th century offer their thoughts on why the post-war generation rebelled against the social and political values their forefathers had died defending.
