I never knew this man.

I never knew this man. 

Growing up, every year as November 11th approached, we were told stories of the bravery of men who went to war to fight for our freedom, of the many that were lost in battle.  We would read poems, sing songs, and as we grew older, put on plays.  Books were written, movies were made; Poppies were worn.  The message was everywhere, of how men in their youth had put their lives on the line. 

But these remained stories, disconnected from today by the stretches of time and the nature of how their tales were told, in lands far away and in settings unfamiliar.  What really happened was interpreted by others, and the lines between fiction and reality blurred as the years went by.  Hollywood would produce blockbusters depicting the battles of war, young men who would normally have more days ahead than behind, youthful in their bravery, their naivety and their fears, cut short by the events that unfolded or celebrating in the glory of victory.

And still I never knew this man.

With the timing of the two world wars, and some knowledge about my grandparents and their parents before them, mixed in with the messages we were fed about the youth of war, made it all clear to me that - by luck or by happenstance - our family had been spared from the prospect of being torn apart; spared from having to send one son or another off to the front lines.  And every November I celebrated the sacrifices of others, with a side of guilt on behalf of our family for not contributing to the narrative.

And yet I never knew this man.

I never knew that the stories and depictions were wrong.  That it wasn't only the teens and twenty-somethings that were heading overseas.  I never knew that my assumptions about our family were all wrong.  I never knew that, at the ripe age of forty and having two young children of his own, this man I never knew signed up to take part. 

Perhaps all those years I was just too young to understand.  Or perhaps I was just desensitized with the inundation of the stories and glorification of it all.  Perhaps it was the perspective you get when you first hold your newborn in your hands, the moment all of your priorities shift.  Perhaps it was only then when the sacrifices and bravery became real.  Not the bravery of the battlefield, the ones that are celebrated on screen and in tales told; but the bravery of boarding that ship, leaving two small children behind, not knowing when - or if - he would get to hold them again.  His youngest was only 6.

I never knew this man, this man who took up arms.

I never knew that on October 28, 1916 -  100 years ago, almost to the day - he landed in England to take his position.  He suffered gun shot wounds on more than one occasion, and an unknowable number of moments where he would have faced uncertainty; uncertainty about whether tomorrow would come, uncertainty of whether he would ever see his two small boys again. 

Yet this man did return home. 

Two and a half years later, wounded and discharged, he crossed the ocean and was reunited with the family he left behind.  This man survived his tour, returned home, and lived on to see his seventy-ninth birthday.  And perhaps it is because of this - that he survived and didn't fit the young age profile that the wars are depicted with, that I never knew that this man had even served.  Perhaps it is because he did return that I did not know; his story was left to him to tell, and perhaps he did not want to tell it.  Perhaps he didn't want to take away from the stories of those that stood beside him and didn't return home.   Or perhaps his tale was lost in the haze of time or did not make the final edit of the poems and storybooks and movies that we've been consuming all this time. 

I never knew this man, this man who was far from his youth when he stepped up for the sake of the greater good.  The sacrifice it took to walk away from his two small children, the bravery of walking into the unknown.

I never knew this man.  His name was Alonzo. 

I never knew him.  Yet his blood runs through my veins.

Alonzo Nathan Clark (1875 - 1954).

http://21stbattalion.ca/tributeac/clark_an.html