Remembrance Day:
What the tiny Falklands War taught me about my Dad’s WWII Service
By Linda O’Neil
In 1982 there was a two-month-long war between the United Kingdom and Argentina over the tiny Falkland Islands chain in the South Atlantic, with its 3,500 inhabitants. It was such an unlikely war that most people could hardly believe it was taking place. But it had a surprising impact on my life.
My parents were visiting from Toronto and we were out having tea when the subject of the war came up. My husband Mark remarked that he had always been grateful that his generation, unlike the previous two, hadn’t been called on to go to war. It prompted me to ask my father, Gordon O’Neil, who was 62 at the time, if he resented that the responsibility for fighting with the Allies in World War II had fallen to his generation and that he had had to give up more than five years of his youth to the war effort. His answer surprised me.
Dad had always spoken candidly about his experience in the Navy. There were pictures of him in uniform and a few taken on one of the corvettes he sailed on – those small, scrappy anti-submarine ships that guarded oil, explosives and merchant convoys between Venezuela, the Caribbean, Halifax and Britain, He recounted some of his experiences on ”The Snowberry” but never romanticized them. He never complained about having had to go to war, and was grateful to have survived and returned home to get on with his life. As a veteran he marched in the Warriors’ Day Parade at the Ex each summer and was a member of the Toronto Naval Club, similar to the Legon. Later in life he and my mother started going to Naval reunions each year and meeting up with other couples they enjoyed getting to know. His naval service was a matter-of-fact part of his life. But we had never spoken about how it all started.
Dad had been in Grade 12 when war was declared, he told me. Conscription hadn’t yet taken effect though it was assumed to be around the corner. It was surmised that if you enlisted you’d be able to get into the branch of the military you wanted; if you were conscripted, you’d have no choice in the matter. So he and two of his friends had decided to quit school and enlist. They got their wish: he signed up for the Navy and the other boys went into the Army and Air Force.
Canadians, Dad said, joined the war primarily out of a sense of duty and loyalty to Britain. The war would be far away. People thought it might be over in a year, or no more than two – nobody could have imagined how quickly it would spread across the globe, dwarfing the First World War in territory covered and casualties, and go on for so many years. Those who had enlisted hoping for adventure soon learned what war was really like. As it turned out, the enlisted men didn’t know much more about what was happening than what was announced in the newspapers back home. Battles were fought. Those who weren’t killed or seriously injured just kept fighting on – some for up to five or six years.
This conversation put the War and my father’s role in it into a new perspective and gave me much more of a sense of what he and his generation had gone through – and why. Like everyone I know, I abhor war, but I still watch the Remembrance Day services in honour of my Dad, mourn the losses on all sides, and pray that the world will finally come to its senses and make peace.