Large Fierce Mammal

I was born in 1957 and most of what matters to me in life was shaped by growing up surrounded by people who lived through, and/or served in some capacity during, World War 2. Of the next door neighbours, one couple consisted of a British engineer who had flown bombers for the RAF, and his Canadian wife. She had been a military nurse who met her husband in England while tending to his wounds in hospital after his bomber was shot up. Those two taught me how to fish and I spent many happy enthralled hours in their company.

On the other end of the block was another couple, the husband of which had served in the Royal Canadian Army, finishing out his service as a small arms instructor to the end of the war. A founding member of the Lunenburg Rod & Gun Club to which I still belong, he taught me to shoot, and I am privileged to own the service pistol he carried during his time in uniform.

In adulthood, I either am, or have been, honoured to know a Lancaster pilot, a US Navy F4U Corsair pilot who served both in World War 2 and the Korean War, two men who went ashore on D-Day, and another who landed with an armored unit the following day. Along the way, I’ve also spent some enjoyable hours with a Spitfire Mk.IX pilot and a week getting to know a retired RCAF Sabre pilot while we were attending the same course and practicing our drinking and limerick recitals in the evenings. No bombast or chest beating. Just ordinary people who did extraordinary things. Things we all need to be eternally and unforgettingly grateful for.

My father was the oldest of seven offspring born to Clement and Almeada Whynacht in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, in the period just prior to, and during, the Great Depression. When The Great War had broken out in 1914, his father was working as a crewman on a salt banker which effectively excluded him from service with the Canadian Expeditionary Force, as it did others such as farmers whose family or occupational situation made their service in that role more important than a military one. After all – the country’s got to eat. Not only that, but the production and export of salt cod was a vital component in the economy of Atlantic Canada in those days. By the time World War 2 rolled around, my father was 10 years old, and his father was too old for military service, as well as being the sole bread winner for a family totalling nine souls.

Frank Zinck somewhere in England. Click the picture to enlarge.

On my mother’s side there have been a lot of wartime connections. We have her father, Frank Zinck of Chester, Nova Scotia, who by all appearances never missed a good fight. He enlisted with the CEF on 22 August 1915, served in Europe until the war ended and later re-enlisted in the army in 1939 by conveniently forgetting his true age. Surprisingly, the army remembered and sent him home, but not before he went through refresher training and made it to England. For more on him, take a look at my 1 November 2010 article titled The Sword and the Snowflake – Chapter the First.

Buster in happier times. Click the picture to enlarge.

Also on my mother’s side was her oldest brother who I only know by his family nickname – Buster. Buster did fight in World War 2 where he was seriously injured when the vehicle he was driving went off the road and burned with him trapped inside. He had all his hair burned off with major burns to his upper body, and was shipped home after a lengthy stay in an English military hospital. The Buster that returned was a moody, chain smoking, hard drinking, and barely recognizable shell of the handsome, fun loving, skirt chaser who left. Most of his hair had grown back, but was darker and coarser than before.

Buster somewhere in England and before the “accident”. Click the picture to enlarge.

I never met my uncle Buster, and all I remember of him comes from a few old photographs, stories my mother told me, and the sporadic Christmas presents he sent my way when I was very young. Buster would drop off the map for progressively longer periods, finally disappearing altogether and I don’t believe anyone in his family really ever knew what happened to him. Most of Buster’s experiences in Europe are lost in history, but my mother told me a few things. She said that Buster disclosed the accident he was burned in was no accident, saying that he was the driver for a high ranking officer that he hated with such a passion that he orchestrated the wreck as a way of getting rid of him. As is usual with these things, Buster was the only one injured.

My mother’s next oldest brother, Murray, had a heart defect caused by a childhood illness and was absolutely heart broken when his services were declined by the army. He was very close to his older brother Buster, admired him in the way younger brothers often do, and wanted desperately to fight along side him. I knew Murray well, and he died when I was in my late teens. Through the war, he worked as most did, in a war production factory here on the home front, but he took a festering need to prove his manhood and carried it with him throughout the entirety of his life like a boil on his soul. Murray and those of his generation who were of an age to serve in World War 2 were children of the previous generation who fought in The Great War. Steeped in a history of trial by combat, they absorbed it to their very marrow, disdainful of anyone who looked fit enough to fight and yet had an “excuse” not to step up when their country called. Poor Murray was visibly fit in every respect, his condition only detectable with a stethoscope, and even though he achieved much in his life and earned a large income in the course of it,  every waking moment he wore being turned down at the enlistment station as his defining moment of ultimate humiliation.

Violet “Toots” Zinck as she looked during the war years. Click the picture to enlarge.

The incredible Mosquito – built out of Canadian wood. Click the picture to enlarge.

My mother’s sister, named Violet after her mother and called “Toots” by her family, was the oldest daughter. She spent the war working in a factory that built Mosquito bombers. After the war she met and married Jack Dunlop, a Welshman who fought in Italy during World War 2, but during her time at the factory she attracted the eye of a man who worked on the line that cut and shaped the Plexiglas for the Mosquito’s windows. In that portion of the family archives that rests in my care, I have a small heart with a red ribbon that he ground from that very Plexiglas, and presented to my aunt Toots as a token of his affection.

In celebration of my aunt Toots, and all like her who laboured mightily here at home to keep our troops fighting, I’ll offer this Gracie Fields classic.

Buzz Beurling in 1943. Click the picture to enlarge.

Spitfire Mk.IX of 412 Squadron (RCAF) flown by Buzz Beurling between December 1943 and January 1944. Click the picture to enlarge.

Not related to my family, but connected nonetheless by the fact that my mother was born and raised in the district of Montreal called Verdun, was George “Buzz” Beurling. The Beurlings lived nearby and on the same street as my mother’s family, the Zinck and Beurling children played together, and their mothers knew each other well. Buzz Beurling was Canada’s most famous fighter pilot, known as “the Falcon of Malta” for shooting down 27 Axis aircraft in a 19 day period flying his Spitfire over the besieged Mediterranean island. Knowing his family, having been in the place where he grew up, and having played with his younger siblings was always a point of pride for my mother.

Near the end of his life, my maternal grandfather, Frank, briefly lived with my parents in Lunenburg, and died shortly before I was born. Family lore has it that, on first meeting my paternal grandfather, Clem, and shaking his hand, he asked, “Are you an old sweat?” – a reference to service in The Great War.

The story goes that learning the facts shaped their relationship forever.

I’ll close with one of my favourite songs from the 1939-1945 war years. Have a listen and never forget.