Description
Mr. Walsh describes the demoralization factor he attributes to older married soldiers constantly reminiscing about their families.
Graham Walsh
Graham Walsh was born in Sydney, Nova Scotia, on January 22, 1925. He was the third of seven children. His father worked in a steel mill, and made a bit extra selling coke, a smelting byproduct. His father died when he was seven, and Mr. Walsh and his brother worked odd jobs to help the family. He joined the local reserves when he was fifteen and two years later, at the age of seventeen, enlisted for overseas service. Once in England, he was overlooked for Italian deployment and immediately volunteered for Normandy. Mr. Walsh served from France to post-war Germany, via the liberation of Holland, all with the Royal Regiment of Canada. He was fortunate to survive three wounds while in action.
Transcript
It’s good you’re young. That was another thing that really, really stood out with me over there, older people, it’s no place for anybody. Even people that are in their late twenties, that’s no place for them, if they’re married and got a home. It’s no place for them because they can’t let it go. It’s over there with them and lots of times you wish they’d take them back, don’t put them up with you at all. You didn’t want them out, especially when things were really bad. You were getting artillery and you were getting shot at and that. And they’d go into the home, their family, their kids. It demoralized the younger people along with it but that was one thing that I found about, the war is not for older people.