Recently I rediscovered several articles that I had once written in the 1990s (and then plum forgotten about). Thanks to Genni Gunn and AI, the photo beneath got converted into digital text. Free
of the word-count limitations required when writing for the Vancouver Sun, I recently did a bit of a rewrite. Then, Andreas did a bit of a copy edit. It takes a village. |
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1994 December 10, The Weekend Sun. Vancouver Sun. |
France. Early December 1958.
On this day, my mother, my four brothers and I traveled by train from Calais. Our father, an RCAF navigator, now stationed at Grostenquin (2 Wing) in Alsace-Lorraine, France, had gone on ahead of us three months earlier. We had stayed back at our Grannie Oddie’s in Lytham St. Annes, Lancashire because we had to wait for our name to rise to the top of the list for an available PMQ (Permanent Married Quarters). Finally, we were on our way to our new home. At 10 o'clock that night, we pulled into the St. Avold Station. My father charged into our cubicle, not stopping for hugs. "The trains don't stop long, Betty. You grab the little ones. I’ll hand the luggage out to Brian and Sharon"
At less than a year old, my brother Martin was the youngest, a babe in arms. The next eldest, Bruce, was a high-spirited two year old kept safe on a leash. Struan was four, Brian was ten and at age twelve, I considered myself to be on the brink of adulthood. After Brian and I had offloaded and stacked a few of the lighter bags off to the side at the station, Dad started to lower Mum's cream-colored portable sewing machine down through the open window of the train. Brian and I reached as high as possible above our heads and supported its base as we slid it slowly down the steel wall of the train. We had it halfway down when the train shuddered once, lurched forward, shuddered again, and then picked up steam. Brian and I galloped alongside for a few yards, got the machine down to chest height, hauled it away from the train, and stepped back. We then caught sight of our receding father, hanging out of the train window as he disappeared into the night, while yelling obscenities at the station master, whose reply was summed up by the justly infamous Gallic shrug.
My mother didn't speak a lick of French. "Sharon," she said, "First things first. You ask the station master where the next stop is.” Since our previous military posting had been in Quebec, I was now the family translator, and hence led off with my very best Quebecois.
“Pardon?” The station master pushed one hairy ear closer to my mouth. I repeated. He squinted harder. I rephrased, and spoke even louder. Finally, he grinned at me with his abundance of tobacco-stained teeth and said (probably) "Behning!" I proudly announced to my mother that Berlin would be the next station.
“Not Berlin," she gasped. Brian stood guard farther on down the platform, holding tight to his adult-sized bow and arrow. Sensibly, he had built a corral out of our offloaded luggage to contain Struan and Bruce. "Not Berlin," our mother repeated with Martin still in her arms.
Fifteen minutes later, at Behning — not Berlin, Dad threw the remaining luggage out the window and phoned for a cab. Meanwhile, my mother called the base officials for help. Fifteen minutes later, two military police leapt out of a van and planted themselves in front of her. "Does your husband have the keys to your apartment, ma'am?"
"Yes.” Mum replied.
“Maybe the super will let you in,” said one of the military police, “Do you have the address of your apartment?"
"No."
Brian’s bow was still at the ready. We grinned uneasily at one another.
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It wasn't until I read No Life Like It: Military Wives in Canada, by Deborah Harrison and Lucie Laliberté (James Lorimer, $19.95) that I appreciated the full underbelly of this tale. The way that military wives got treated – back then and still today - is outrageous. When marriages unraveled while the family was stationed overseas, the wives and children got shipped back to Trenton or Ottawa and were then left to fend for themselves. If they were lucky, they might catch a “flip” flight closer to where they intended to settle. These wives had no access to the family goods (pots, pans, sheets and the like) left behind in Europe, nor to the more substantial belongings (sofas, beds, freezers) locked up in storage in Canada – unless their estranged husbands agreed.
In terms of financial buffers, there was unlikely to be any equity in a family home. Postings every one to four years made home-owning impossible for most. The frequent moves also made it impossible for most wives to have a work history that was anything but spotty. They had no pensions, no UIC, nothing. Even the riches of life-long friendships were hard to maintain when one was forced to move every few years. As children, because this was all we knew, we had accepted that our lives would be lived on roller skates. Fortunately, I survived attending twelve different schools during my educational career. Children born with learning disabilities or emotional challenges were often not so lucky. On this day in December, my mother had had to make her own way - without her husband - with five children under the age of 12 and all their luggage - first on a train in England, then onto a ferry and lastly on to a train into France. Such challenges were accepted as part of the military life.
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Our new home in St. Avold PMQs – top floor on left. |
Is it any better now? Authors Harrison and Laliberté mention that the 1993 report of the Canadian Panel of Violence Against Women singled out the military as a special problem when it came to the lived experiences of women. Alcoholism still plays a significant role in their abuse. The military rates of alcoholism are 50 per cent higher than they are for the rest of Canada. At a gut level, all the former "brats" who I met at a recent B.C. reunion in Vancouver for children of Air Force families had experienced this reality and had continued to know it in their bones. We nodded as one "brat" recalled that we all stayed off the streets on Friday nights. We knew what condition our fathers would be in as they drove home half-cut from their regular TGIF mess binge. Together, we recognized that part of our self-defense had always been to repackage these kinds of experiences into stories, the funnier the better.
I recalled the night a young fighter pilot used a turkey baster to suck up a paddle of sloe gin after a bottle had broken on the kitchen floor. And the night a junior officer started to throw up from too much drink. Not wanting to make a mess he had pulled out the bottom part of his sweater to catch the vomit. The only problem was, he was too drunk to figure out how to take his sweater off. "Betty!" he bawled from the bathroom. My mother had mimicked his dilemma for years after, and her repeat performance was always good for a laugh. Even the hapless junior officer always laughed along with us at the memory.
On party nights at our place, my father was adamant that no one could drive home under the influence. Sensible. Often, he would lock the apartment door so that no one could even be able to try to drive back to base. Then he would hide the key. Mum would roll out air mattresses and sleeping bags, and the next morning my brothers and I would tiptoe by as we inspected the fallen troops. One such morning, when we were ready for school and the men were still sleeping it off, Mum shook her husband’s shoulder. "David! Where's the key?" He woke up briefly, smiled at her sweetly, and still under the influence, slurred: "Don't worry. I hid it." We had to call out the window to a neighbour, to get the super to bring a key for us.
Regrettably, for us and many of our friends, alcohol was the accelerant for rage and that rage sometimes led to violence. There are no reliable Canadian statistics yet, but U.S. figures indicate that the rate of child abuse in the American military is five times the national average. “In the United States one spouse or child is reputed to die each week at the hands of a military member relative,” say the authors of No Life Like It.
In the conversations at our “brats” reunion, we all tiptoed around the implications of such issues. Not only was camaraderie our focus that day, but we had absorbed enough of the military upbringing to count on the likelihood that we could probably survive anything that hit us. After all, we had been raised in a cultural ghetto, one that was reinforced by our frequent transfers, one where our own status in the playground and at school was based on our father’s rank. The implications of rank-ordered obedience, coupled with the need to present a seamless front – all spit and polish, not only to the community at large but also to our friends and neighbours - shaped our silence.
At the “brats” reunion, four siblings had traveled in from Kitimat and Nanaimo just to be together, and I totally understood why. Like them, every time we moved, our families had stuck together ever more tightly - like the popular slogan for Lepage’s glue: “Together we stick, divided we’re stuck”. Like us, they had joined their siblings during their entire childhood in endless card games and puzzles, and had earnestly poured over their organized collections of stamps, coins, baseball cards – anything portable.
“It’s funny though,” one of the younger brats mused, “After our Dad left the service, it was kind of like he imploded. He didn’t know what to do next. We didn’t either. We moved from the Maritimes to B.C. and Jesus! We felt like a full load of hicks.” I knew precisely what he meant. For us, like them, the military life had been everything; our friendships had made us part of a larger family. Whenever a new family moved into the PMQs, a hot dinner and help packing up boxes was always offered by several of our new neighbours. We made friends instantly, and at the same time we also left these new friends just as suddenly.
Just like the military brass, none of us had ever looked too closely at the drinking, the violence, and the exploitation of women. Nor to the costs to the children. We needed to not know. Like our parents, we needed to keep on believing in the slogans as trumpeted on the recruiting posters: There’s No life Like It.
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1957 Photo: Brian,
Struan, Sharon, Bruce – Martin born one year later. |
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