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A War Memorial about "Uncle Bud"

"I was almost 4 years old when my dad caught me looking up to my 'Uncle Bud'."

- Care Baldwin

Written by Bill Stevens, General Manager of CHRI

“Bud” joined the army when he was 17 to get away from our dad. His mom and dad had split up a couple of years before and he was sharing a one-room apartment with his father in Toronto. It’s nice when a father and son can get close, but this was too close for Bud. He was out of school and working as a messenger for the Imperial Bank of Canada when he left. They guaranteed him a job if he came back.

Overseas

Bud got to continue his work as a messenger but now he was riding a motorcycle delivering messages between superior officers just behind the Allied Front.

That’s about all I ever heard about his service for Canada until only a few years before his passing.

He had been part of a troop convoy entering Germany near the end when it was hit by bombers. Everyone was told to get off the train and duck into the forest for cover. Apparently, the pilots weren’t interested in the train as they bombed both sides, killing or wounding many of the disembarked troops.

Bud was severely wounded and more than once given up for dead. He remembers an army medic saying, “save the morphine for someone else, that one’s not going to make it”.

Earlier, while in London on leave, he had met a pretty English girl named “Rose” and it was her that stood by him during the months he recuperated in the hospital.

His injuries left him with a steel hip, colostomy, orthopedic shoes, stiches that pulled his belly button all the way to one side (funny the things you remember seeing as a kid) and a beautiful war bride who would dedicate her life to tying his shoes.

Bud lived out his life a happily married man with two children, four grandchildren and yes, the Imperial Bank took him back where he rose to Branch Manager in what had become the Imperial Bank of Commerce.

A few years before his death, Bud told me the only “war story” I ever heard from him. He was visiting us in Ottawa around Remembrance Day. He was alone now; his precious Rose having departed a year or two earlier and we sat together in silence at the kitchen table. It was a comfortable silence. Then, out of nowhere, looking down at his hands cupped prayer-like in front of him, he started to speak.

“There was a young man, a kid really, about the same age I was when I joined up. He was a beautiful boy maybe 18, blond hair, blue eyes, from PEI I think. I’d been battle worn a few years by then and he really looked up to me. First time he saw a fight we were in a ditch together and everything was calm, so quiet you could hear birds off in the distance. The kid was scared, he looked at me. He asked me if I would “look after him”. I told him to just keep his head down. A few minutes later the firing started. He looked up to see where it was coming from and died instantly.

Bud cried. The only other thing he said was “he asked me to look after him and I couldn’t”.

I cried too, gave him a hug and thanked him because I knew then that it wasn’t about serving his country, winning the war or even following orders. It was about looking after each other.

So, on Remembrance Day, we thank them all, past and present and pray that they will continue to look after each other, because in so doing they look after us all.

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