Private Jack Spears was 36 when he signed up to fight in the Great War in 1916.
A tough farmer and firefighter used to physical labor in all kinds of weather, it was probably a recruiter’s dream.
He was also my grandfather, although I never knew him.
He was always a mysterious figure to me. Through my sister Laura, the family historian, I learned part of her story: she was born on the rocky Bruce Peninsula, dropped out of school to work at age 12 because her father had died in an agricultural accident. He moved to Winnipeg and then Alberta as an adult. He grew some there and later worked as a salesman.
And when he returned from France in 1919, he settled with his wife and three children in Ontario. By then he was a different man, the once tough farmer in such poor health that I couldn’t get a full-time job, even though my grandmother worked as a milliner in the age of fancy women’s hats. Moved: Toronto, London, and many summer trips back to Tobermory on Bruce. He died in 1951.
A couple of years ago, my brother John asked to see our grandfather’s military file, and we learned how difficult the war had been for him.
Private Spears enlisted in the 187th Overseas Battalion from central Alberta and arrived in France in time for the 1916 Somme campaign. He was wounded in some way … the records don’t say how, but they remained on duty. Then, in 1917, it was gassed. His medical record indicates that the previous year “he had several asthma attacks in France, especially in (the) bombing of the Somme, where he had difficulty wearing gas masks.” When the gas projectiles arrived, he was not carrying one. He spent three months in the hospital, partly on an English estate turned into a convalescent camp (think: rows of wooden huts), then returned to the front line. He received a plaque for good conduct.
What surprised me the most were the long-term health problems that persisted long after the war ended.
Like thousands of returning Canadian veterans, he returned home damaged but was expected to adjust to civilian life and find a job at a time of high unemployment and labor unrest, without much official help. Certainly without a disability pension.
The veterans got a suit and released them. He received $ 64.40 in discharge pay.
All of this sent me in search of answers from historians and doctors. It seemed to me that while learning about Ypres and Vimy in school, I grew up hearing little about the returning soldiers. Your story has just ended. I have seen photos of soldiers coming home to Canada, smiling broadly and saluting. And those who couldn’t? And have things changed for today’s vets?
Let’s start with my grandfather’s file at the time of his discharge, describing “a pale, war-worn-looking individual” at the end of 1918:
• Chronic appendicitis, although it may also have been an ulcer. Painful in any way;
• Myalgia, pain in the soft tissues, in the trapezius muscles (the back of the neck and the area of the shoulder blade). The pain was severe and the only way she could ease it enough to sleep was by raising her hands above her head. This problem began in the spring of 1917, and blamed the constantly wet conditions at the front;
• I had to urinate about once an hour during the day and three or four times a night. Sleeping was difficult and he sometimes woke up vomiting. He had little appetite for food;
• When walking upstairs or uphill, the tightness in his chest made it difficult for him to breathe. He also had trouble breathing when he lay down, which is called orthopnea. He had a constant cough that produced phlegm;
• Enlarged thyroid, although without symptoms;
• And, of course, the aftermath of the gas.
Yet despite all this, an army medical officer recorded his general health at discharge in one word: “Normal.” You can almost feel the shrug.
I decided to ask a doctor for a modern diagnosis.
Dr. Vivian McAlister is a professor of medicine at Western University and has served as a combat surgeon for the Canadian Forces on five missions in Afghanistan and one in Iraq and, after the 2010 earthquake, in Haiti. Get to know the wounded soldiers, both in body and mind. He looked at my grandfather’s file.
Is it sold out. There is no doubt about it, ”he told me. But the official discharge form only asks about specific questions: are there heart problems? Dental problems? “And the answer to those questions is ‘No.'”
McAlister detects red flags in medical records. “Orthopnea is bad. That’s where you feel out of breath when you’re lying down, ”and the doctor suspects this is a sign of pneumonia. Gastric problems can show an ulcer. Also, a man in his 30s who does not want to eat is likely to experience depression or anxiety.
Private Spears was 39 years old upon his return and likely faced obstacles that someone in their 50s or 55s would encounter in today’s job market, he said.
“While he lived another 30 years, he overcame acute illness and deep exhaustion, but may have had lingering psychological effects for the rest of his life. His medical discharge suggests that he suffered no injuries or disabilities that allowed him to retire. In those days, only extreme forms of PTSD were considered for attention. Your grandfather was a brave man who gave everything. “
Problems like this persist today, he said.
“This is a big problem with demobilization and post-war life for those involved. I think the most important thing that happens to returning soldiers is that they can lose their purpose in life. “After a war full of crises and life-and-death decisions,” you come home and all of that disappears. And those who they either reintegrated into civilian life or had strong families or a strong requirement of their own civilian work. “
Therefore, doctors, farmers, teachers with waiting family jobs can do well. “But there is a group that just can’t see the point of that. They can no longer discipline themselves. They cannot deal with the frustrations of these organizations that they have to deal with. And it comes from their experience in the war, but what really defeats them, I think, is this sudden loss of purpose. “
This, McAlister said, can be worse than a physical injury.
He said that today’s Afghan veterans are like the Boer war veterans of the early 20th century – a smaller group than world war veterans, who find less sympathy and support from society. “And honestly, the country wished that (our role in Afghanistan) had never happened and would rather not talk about it. … They forget “.
Historians say that Canada in 1919 was unprepared for my grandfather and the tens of thousands like him.
“They didn’t look like what people thought disabled vets would be like,” said Elsbeth Heaman, who teaches medical history at McGill University. “Very few were blind and very few had amputations. Most of them were sick. Not visibly injured, but perhaps they had been gassed or had invisible wounds. People suspected that maybe some of them just don’t want to work, they are pretending. But then when there is gas involved, how can you tell? “
Post-traumatic stress was another poorly understood factor.
Heaman says a Military Hospital Commission was created to help veterans, and ran a public relations campaign, “saying, ‘Hire a vet! We are going to retrain them. They can work. ‘
But it had limited success. Unemployment remained high.
Canada a century ago had no recent experience or knowledge of large numbers of wounded veterans and war widows, he said, unlike the United States with its legacy of Civil War retirees.
“No one had really thought about this, (about) what they were going to do” for Canadian vets, Heaman said. And the country was reluctant to spend a lot to help them.
The fighting in the war had already left Canada heavily in debt. “They (the authorities) fear that the whole country is going to collapse … and the economy is down the toilet, and Britain needs more and more,” Heaman said.
In addition to this, Canada had a tradition of private charities, but not government welfare.
This gradually changed throughout the war, he said, and governments worked primarily through charities.
Historians Desmond Morton and Glenn Wright write that what surprised Canadian authorities was the large number of men who were sick or injured.
In the post-war decade, “77,000 veterans collected disability pensions, while thousands more endured pain, weakness, or premature aging without going through the sometimes humiliating ordeal of establishing a claim. The magnitude, not the nature, of the veterans’ experience made it seem new, “they write in” Winning the Second Battle: Canadian Veterans and the Return to Civilian Life 1915-1930. “
On paper, Canada had strong plans to help veterans, they conclude. Actually, the system had problems.
In their book, Morton and Wright illustrate the disdain of the boards that examined men’s disability pension claims. A man who was in perfect health when he enlisted was denied because doctors claimed his heart problem started before enlistment. “Another man received only a 10 percent pension, possibly because his medical board forgot to mention the shrapnel wound that made his life an agony.”
One veteran turned attorney wrote: “When you appear before a medical board, you are treated like a simulator if you are an individual.”
Morton, who died two years ago, wrote that there were “social unrest” in the wake of the war, including riots by stranded soldiers in England and the Winnipeg general strike of 1919. He said these events “were part of the Canadian experience. , asserting their own interests against the authorities who always professed to know better. “
Politicians who suspected a coup would not trust veterans associations, McAlister adds.
Jack Spears lived three more decades. He died in 1951 at the Sunnybrook Military Hospital (as it was called then), built in the 1940s for soldiers from another world war.
Reference-www.thestar.com