"Remember"

If you see only one movie this year, make it this movie. It's the best film My Rare One and I have seen in a long, long time! Christopher Plummer gives the performance of a lifetime.



Seriously, see it.

PPCLI Centennial -- World War II

Continuing on with the history of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry, today's post is about my family's more personal connection.

World War II

[Charles Comfort, Sergeant P.J. Ford]

The PPCLI drew its members largely from Western Canada and so when my Manitoba farm boy father joined the Canadian war effort in 1942, he joined The Patricias. The regiment was part of the Italian campaign along with British forces and Patton's American units. They invaded Sicily in 1943 and fought their way up the Italian peninsula, successfully knocking fascist Italy out of the war and diverting as many Axis resources as possible from the Eastern Front in order to provide some relief to Russia. The Princess Pats then became part of the liberating forces of Holland.

After the Normandy invasion, the Allied soldiers in Italy (who had suffered the heaviest losses in the Western theatre of war) were sometimes teasingly called "D-Day Dodgers." This caused much resentment. I remember my Dad still being pissed off about that nickname decades later, LOL!

When he was 21, my father returned from World War II with what would today be easily recognized as a pretty severe case of post-traumatic stress disorder. Of course, in those days such symptoms were dismissed simply as temporary "battle fatigue" which soldiers were just expected to endure or ignore for the short term.

But, undiagnosed and untreated, my Dad suffered from PTSD for the rest of his life. After 20 years, the worst of the extreme symptoms abated so he was no longer wild, volatile, violent or prone to suicide threats. But he remained moody and subject to unpredictable fits of rage for a further 20 years. The last 20 years of his life were the closest he ever came to living on a relatively even keel but still, his moods could turn on a dime.

His military service was the thing my Dad was most proud of in his life, but he paid a high price for it. As did we who lived with him.

Keep Calm and Carry On

Hasn't this meme had its 15 minutes already? How many silly variations of it can there be?

And yet -- the original phrase had great meaning and a really interesting history. Watch this fascinating little video to find out!



Oh, okay then. The phrase can stay.

The Mad Piper of D-Day

Bill Millin, "the Mad Piper of D-Day," died in Britain earlier this month at age 88. During World War II, the young soldier and bagpiper served in the regiment of Lord Lovat, the commander of the British D-Day troops who landed with the Allies on the beaches of Normandy.

On the fateful morning of June 6, 1944, the 21-year-old Private Millin waded ashore under heavy fire with the other troops, his kilt floating up around him in the waist-high water. But instead of a gun, he held his bagpipes above his head so they wouldn't get wet. There's a famous photo of him disembarking, the drones of his pipes visible in front of his face --

Although playing bagpipes in battle was strictly forbidden by the War Office, Lord Lovat had the unarmed private march up and down Sword Beach, piping Highland Laddie and Road to the Isles as a morale booster while soldiers all around him advanced or were mowed down in the German artillery and machine-gun fire. As Bill Millin said decades later, with amazing understatement, "When you're young, you do things you wouldn't dream of doing when you're older. I enjoyed playing the pipes, but I didn't notice that I was being shot at."

It was truly a miracle that he survived. German prisoners of war captured at Sword Beach subsequently said that the Germans didn't kill him simply because they thought he was insane. That's how he earned his nickname of "the Mad Piper."

There's a great YouTube video about Bill Millin if you want to check it out, complete with an interview about the day that made him a legend.

May a thousand piobaireachd (laments) be piped in his honour.

Fact # 1

1. My favourite movie is Casablanca.

I have seen this movie innumerable times and it always retains its charm for me. I never miss a chance to see it on a big screen (usually at some tumbledown repertory theatre dedicated to art films and the classics) because that's the best way to enjoy it. But TV and DVD viewings are fine too! I think I like it so much because love, politics and noble self-sacrifice for a higher cause all combine in it. It definitely appeals to the romantic idealist in me. And I always get choked up during "La Marseillaise" scene.

"The Germans wore gray, you wore blue." That says it all.