Looking Back

When I was at Rossport, on Lake Superior, in 1914, some of us landed from our vessel to gather blueberries near an Ojibwa camp. An old Indian recognized me, and gave me a tiny medicine-bag to protect me, saying that I would shortly go into great danger. The bag was of skin, tightly bound with a leather thong. Sometimes it seemed to be as hard as rock, at other times it appeared to contain nothing. What really was inside it I do not know. I wore it in the trenches, but lost it when I was wounded and taken to a hospital.

The Germans kept coming, swarming over the trenches in attack. Our machine-guns got red hot and the air was filled with smoke. When the fighting finished, I went over to the front line to see the damage. It was an awful mess – Germans and Canadians lay all over, some wounded, some dead. I went back to rest and wrote to Blanche: "The boys have gone, but not their sweat nor their blood. That will remain forever.

The Colonel begins to read the 36 names of our fallen. Tears are in his eyes. He falters and hands the paper to the Adjutant who calmly folds the paper and puts it in his pocket and quietly says: "It is not necessary. They were comrades. We remember."

A friend of mine, he got killed over there . . . . In the evening we were sitting side by side and a sniper got him. Shot him right between the eyes, you know. I don't know why they didn't pick me.

I'm very glad I went – I wouldn't like to do it again. It was bloody tiresome. Wars are interesting experiences so long as you live through them.

We're proud of the word "volunteer." Nobody forced us, we were good Canadians—patriots—we fought for our country.

Many paid the supreme sacrifice and are buried in those beautiful Canadian military cemeteries in Europe. We personally found graves in France, Belgium and Holland when, in June 1990, 28 Native Veterans of Canada visited our former battlefields.

One time we were sitting up on a hill looking down and I'll bet you there were 10,000 [South Korean refugees] moving. My thoughts went back to my own history—when my relatives moved from the United States. I thought, "Wow, we did this once."

In Cree we say Kahgee pohn noten took on Remembrance Day. It means, "the fighting has ended".