Remembrance Day can be a difficult time for some veterans, as memories of fear, loss and devastation are brought to the surface, thoughts that can be hard to put into words.
For 95-year-old Raymond Brown, a veteran of the Second World War, it’s only in recent years that he’s been able to open up about his wartime experiences.
Born in August, 1921, Brown grew up alongside 10 siblings in Bayside, P.E.I.
In the fall of 1939, he signed up to go to war, one month after his 18th birthday.
“They come along telling that Canada had declared war today and that was good enough for me, whoever they were, I just joined up,” recalls Brown.
It was a potentially dangerous decision, but one Brown has never regretted.
His first three and a half years in service were spent protecting London.
“Just outside of London, that's where the airplanes used to come from Germany. That's where they used to go in and try to do their work and come back out and we were there to make sure they didn't get back home.”
The boy who had never set foot outside the Maritimes was now an anti-aircraft gunner, tasked with taking down German planes assigned to bomb London - a tough and serious job.
As you listen to Brown’s stories, it’s clear he's chosen to mostly remember the good times, memories of some of his comrades that still make him laugh.
“He was always a character. He was coming in and he was rubbing his eyes and somebody said 'what's wrong with you Jack?' ‘Somebody told me there's no Santa Clause,’” recalls Brown.
After defending London, his troop was sent to France as a part of the D-Day invasion. But the journey over the English Channel is a memory he strangely can't recollect.
“I didn't know about it until the next day,” says Brown. “I was over in France sleeping under a truck when they came and woke me up to go to breakfast. I said, ‘where are we?’ ‘We're in France.’ ‘How in the hell did we get here?’”
He had unknowingly survived the largest seaborne invasion in history.
“When you're that age…I don't think I had brains enough to be scared.”
In the hours leading up to embarking on his journey across the English Channel, Brown looked up at the foreign sky and prayed to make it home.
“I prayed that I'd get over there and get back and start my own business, find a good woman, have a family, a boy and a girl,” says Brown.
Brown’s prayer was answered, and then some. He would start a business called Brown and Baglole General Grocery and meet a good woman named Eileen who would become his wife. However, he didn’t stop at the boy and the girl.
“No, I didn't stop there at all,” laughs Brown. “Eileen wanted another girl; well she had to get through seven more boys.”
Ten children, 50 grandchildren and 36 great-grandchildren and counting; the result of a prayer made in the south of England 72 years ago.
With files from CTV Atlantic's Laura Brown
