IVING MEMORIES FADING; AS TIME PASSES, FAMILY MEMBERS OFTEN KEEPERS OF VETERANS’ WAR TALES
By Monique Beech
The Standard
November 10, 2008 Monday
St. Catharines, Ontario
His memories of the Second World War are vast. They fill a room.
But they float in and out of his mind.
Reginald Avedesian is 84 years old. Since 2006, the St. Catharines
resident has had a series of mini strokes that have stripped him of
his short-term memory and caused the old ones to crash in and out
like waves.
"A Harvard," he’ll say when asked by his daughters what kind of plane
he flew in the war.
But ask Avedesian where he was stationed in England, and he shakes
his head. There are good days and bad days. Today is a bad one.
"I don’t know. I can’t remember."
Now, members of his family are the keepers of Avedesian’s war memories,
as are other children of Second World War veterans who fought for
freedom between 1939 and 1945.
Most who fought were born in the 1920s, and are now well into
their 80s.
The living memories are fading.
Tucked away in his basement, are war mementoes for Avedesian’s three
children, Diane, Catherine and Mark, and four grandchildren.
A worn flight log. A tan leather flight cap. A dusty military jacket.
A box of letters sent from family and friends.
An album filled with black-and- white photos of young military guys,
planes and British lassies with succinct labels: "Our favourite pub,"
"Fred Shantz: Killed overseas Bombardier in 1945."
"When you start to read through it, it’s very emotional to look
through some of the stuff and realize what he had to learn and do
at such a young age and that he chose to do this, and correspond,"
said his daughter Diane Curtas, a 49-year-old nurse.
"Well, it’s sacrifice, right? They did whatever they were asked to do."
Avedesian enlisted in 1942 at the age of 18 with the Royal Canadian
Air Force and trained in Winnipeg and Brandon, Man., before being
shipped to England.
He was the son of Armenian immigrants who grew up in Cambridge (then
called Galt), and always dreamed of flying.
During the war, he flew Lancaster bombers, Harvards, Tiger Moths and
Oxfords in England and trained other pilots.
He was a collector and a fastidious organizer who went on to become
a real estate broker after returning home from the war and marrying
Alice. The family moved to St. Catharines in the 1970s.
He kept his commercial pilot’s licence and shared his love of flying
with his children and grandchildren.
Growing up, he told his children about the rigours of pilot training,
the camaraderie and losing friends who were young and didn’t come
back from the war with him.
"I think as I’ve gotten older I’ve realized, not just now, but
realized all the hardship that my dad went through to achieve this
one goal of becoming a pilot," said daughter Catherine Fogg, 51, a
nurse in St. Catharines. "I’ve just appreciated all the persistence
he had in achieving it. The difficulty, not just of him, but of all
the men that he served with and he trained with that he went through."
His grandson Jonathan, 9, sat next to Avedesian on Fogg’s couch
Thursday. The chatty lad plunked his grandpa’s old war helmet on his
head and held the gas mask to his face.
Jonathan said he likes seeing his grandfather’s old war mementoes,
especially the old gas mask.
"It’s still pretty cool that he was actually a bomber pilot,"
Jonathan said.
Another generation remembers.
Bill Clifford’s memory is sharp.
Clifford, 85, can recount his time as a bomber pilot in the Second
World War like it last week.
His hearing is the challenge. He lost much of it when he inadvertently
flew through a bomb blast during an air strike in 1944 and it has
become worse since.
Clifford uses a series of high-tech microphones and hearing aids to
communicate. It makes it hard to carry a conversation, which frustrates
the shy man.
Ten years ago, he wrote a 38-page memoir. He called it Reflections
on November 11th. It chronicles Clifford’s experiences — mainly
in Eisenhoven, Holland — during the last nine months of the war
in Europe.
In 1941, at the age of 17, the St. Catharines resident went off to
defend his country with the Royal Canadian Air Force, He eventually
became a sergeant and flight commander who flew Spitfires and huge
Tycoon planes loaded with 900 kilograms of bombs.
He went on 92 missions, and lost many friends. In the memoir he names
all 15 of them. On Remembrance Day, he recites their names to himself.
In the memoir, he writes of entering Bergen-Belsen, a Nazi
concentration camp in Germany, on April 21, 1945, and witnessing
overwhelming human tragedy.
"For many years after the war my view of a holiday beach crowded with
frolicking sunbathers was superimposed by the indelible picture in my
mind of those poor camp victims, mostly naked skeletal bodies still
staggering about, crumbling up like a pile of bones," he wrote in
the memoir.
He was among the liberators near the end of war, who swept through
Holland and Denmark.
In the memoir, there are also sweet memories of flying, celebrating
the Feast of Sinterklaas, or St. Nicholas, on Dec. 6 in Holland,
and taking a leave in the French Alps.
Before writing the memoir, Clifford recorded many of his war memories
on tape. On the 60th anniversary of the D-Day Invasion in 2004, his
filmmaker son, Frank, documented where Clifford trained in Canada
and was stationed in Europe.
For years, Clifford found his war past too difficult to speak
about. Over time, he began to think he should share his stories with
his family and the families of those who had died fighting next to him.
"Well, I guess they (family members) were always asking me. I think
they figured it got to the point where they figured I didn’t do
anything," Clifford said with a laugh.
"I didn’t tell anything. I didn’t want to be left with that opinion,
of course. I wanted them to understand it wasn’t the case of blood
and guts all the way. There was pleasurable moments to it and good
experiences travelling and so on, and flying, hazards, and so on,"
said Clifford, a widower who lives in a St. Catharines retirement home.
Clifford returned to St. Catharines after the war and became a
real estate broker. He married Agnes; they had 10 children and 13
grandchildren.
"We never knew much about it when we were kids; it was just buried,"
his son Mark Clifford said of his father’s war experiences.
One of Bill’s eight surviving children Mark, 54, a musician who
lives in St. Catharines, said he’s grateful for his dad’s memoir,
tapes and video.
"I’m proud of my father for his heroism and his leadership with the
men that he crewed."
Two of Clifford’s children, Rob Clifford and Maureen Cripps, are
teachers who often share their dad’s story with their students.
Rob Clifford, 42, of Orillia, plays a tape his dad made for his
elementary school students explaining the importance of remembering
the war and the human side of the battle. He said he cherishes his
dad’s memoir, and other pieces of his experience that will live on.
"They’re absolute treasures. I’ve got two young kids now — my boys
are Grade 6 and Grade 3 — and it’s nice to be able to share those
with them. It means a lot to me.
"From a very young age, my two boys
(Matthew, 10, and Ian, 8) have had a real strong appreciation for
Remembrance Day and a lot of it is they can really
relate to because that’s their papa."
– – –
Remembrance Day ceremonies
Royal Canadian Legion, Branch 24
Where: Cenotaph on St. Paul Street West, St. Catharines
Time of Memorial Service: 10:45 a. m.
Special event to commemorate the
90th anniversary of armistice ending the hostilities in the First
World War
Royal Canadian Legion, Merritton Branch 138
Where: Cenotaph on Merritt Street at 11 a. m. Marching from legion
at 10 a. m. at 2 Chestnut E.
Royal Canadian Legion, West Lincoln Branch 127 Where: Grimsby Museum
at 6 Murray St., Grimsby When: 10:45 a. m.
Jordan Lions Club hosting Remembrance Day ceremony in partnership
with the Royal Canadian Legion, Lincoln Branch 612
Where: Jordan Lions Park on Fourth Avenue, between 17th and 19th
streets Time: 10:30 a. m.
Royal Canadian Legion, Thorold Branch 17 Where: Memorial Park When:
10:30 a. m.
Royal Canadian Legion, Pelham Branch 613 Where: Legion hall at 141
Highway 20 East When: 10:45 p. m.
What: New Veterans Park will be dedicated
Royal Canadian Legion, Niagara-on-the- Lake Branch 124 Where: Cenotaph
on Queen Street, Niagara-on-the-Lake When: 11 a. m.
Ridley College Remembrance Day ceremony When: 8 a. m. for Grades 9
and 11 and 1:30 pm for Grades 10 and 12