Herbert Hodkin and David Weir Goodwin.

[agoodwinsmith]

Today we remember those who fought in World War I.

Herbert Hodkin survived the war.  He was born in 1899.  He ran away from home at 15 and joined up.  Canada was so in love with Britain that the recruiters let him go.  He was at Vimy Ridge.  He was gassed, and lost his sight and memory.  He recouperated in a hospital in Britain, where primative plastic surgery was performed on his face, and his sight was restored.  After the war, he tried finding work in Canada, USA, and Australia.  His face was so scarred that no one would hire him.  He eventually threw his medals in a river.  In the USA he met and married Helen Partlow when she was 18 and he was 35.  They had a son and a daughter.  They immigrated to Canada (he repatriated) when Helen was 35.  Herbert Hodkin died at the age of 77 in 1977.  His daughter is my mother.

David Weir Goodwin did not survive the war.  He was born in 1888.  He also volunteered to go.  He was wounded at the front, sent to hospital, healed and returned to the front.  He was wounded again and sent to hospital again.  He was nearly ready to return to the front.  The man in the bunk below had also been wounded in his first stint at the front, and did not want to return to the front.  He attempted to shoot himself in the foot and instead killed the man in the bunk above him.  David Weir Goodwin died on 23 Sept 1917, one week before his 29 birthday.  He is buried in France.  He was my father's uncle.

My grandfather never talked about his experiences in the war, and he never wore poppies.  I was inculcated with the wearing of poppies by men who survived World War II and who were belligerant with arrogant entitled pride.  I now wear poppies ironically because these acts of rememberance are futile.  Uniformed men were killed or shattered and uniformed men continue to be killed and shattered, for land, for oil, for other commodities that they don't control and have no benefit from.

And now we get a day off with pay, and most of us spend it sleeping in - I did.

Comments

[agoodwinsmith.livejournal.com]

While I believe that this day reminds us of the futility and waste, I don't think it has the power to reduce or ameliorate these things. I met my mother's cousin's son when we were both 16. I lived in Canada in relative comfort and he in the States in the kind of poverty Vimes describes about Cockbill Street. We were pretty similar in temperament and opinion. I met him again when we were 26. Poverty had forced him into the armed forces (I have no idea what peer-pressure might have been involved in the post-draft era). He was a very different person. He had always been perfectly capable of seeing when his efforts were being used for shit purposes, but poverty had made him complicit. Something has to give under that kind of pressure, and he reminded me of nothing so much as those WWII veterans I mentioned above. I don't know how to describe the change in non-cliche ways. Hard. Disillusioned. Now capable of ungood acts for a personal purpose. I think poverty and propaganda are stronger than days of rememberance. I think the fallen and veteran family members of us all deserve to be remembered, but I especially think this because I think their idealism and committment have been squandered.