Nov. 11 is a challenging day for families who lost their loved ones to war, but it’s an even harder one for those who survived to tell their stories.
In a Western society built on many years of conflict, sacrifice, and war, we often find ourselves taking a moment of silence on Remembrance Day to honour those who lost their lives in the battle for our freedom.
But what about all of the people who fought and survived to tell their stories?
These soldiers, medics, pilots, engineers, and all of their family members are left with a lifetime of emotional and physical struggles on a scale that the world refuses to acknowledge.
As a person who comes from a military family, the concept of honour in fighting for one’s country was always upheld as a very important value in my household. This value has led me to have the utmost respect for the men and women who risk their lives so that we can live ours.
But as I grew up, I started to notice that when these men and women return to their families from war, they’re often left with nothing. They come back in a condition where they more often than not need both physical and mental care, but are instead greeted by a bureaucratic mess.
The wait to access Veterans Affairs Canada (VAC) benefits from the Canadian government is at least four months. Our veterans sacrifice their mental stability, their limbs, their familial relationships, and precious moments in their lives, only to come home and go without food, housing, or medical care.
Ultimately, for many veterans, this leads to chronic issues such as alcoholism, depression, paralyzation, and an overall strain on their family unit as a whole.
This is a strain my family has seen all too often, as many of my relatives have been serving our country since the First World War.
The two that had the greatest impact on my life were my great-grandfather Nigel Holbeche, who served as a pilot of a heavy bomber squad with the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) in the Battle of Britain, and my grandfather, Donald Grant Lazier, who served as a private for two years in the Second World War.
My great-grandfather Holbeche entered the war as a selfless man with a beautiful, loving family, but he came back as an entirely different man. The mass devastation he witnessed on the front lines and the lack of aid he received upon his return led to his suffering with mental health issues — which, in the 1940s, definitely were not being addressed by the VAC.
I’m sure these names are unrecognizable to everyone reading this, but if I can, I’d like to bring one of them back to life just for a moment.
This led to his excessive drinking, nightmares, and uncontrollable behaviour. The accumulation of this lost him his family and ultimately led him to drink himself to death, drowning in the ocean when my grandmother was eight years old.
His death has created a generational pain in my family that is still felt to this day. My great-grandfather Holbeche is just one of so many men and women, and by extension their families, that willingly risk their lives and sanity to return to a nation that does not return the favour.
I hope that by bringing my family’s story back to life just for a minute, you’re able to gain some insight and appreciation for the heroes who aren’t always celebrated, and join me in a moment of silence.
