My third family history book

 

 

Amidst  all the chaos of 2020 I still managed to get my family history book about Dad published: "Between maple leaf and wattle: Bede's story". 

Special love and thanks to everyone who helped me along the way. It took about three years to write and self-publish. I'm selling copies for A$15 plus postage. Contact me via this blog if you are interested in purchasing a copy.

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Captain Bede James Smith Image Eight

A lone Canadian maple leaf on a plaque in Perth commemorates the military service of Captain B J Smith.  After the war, Bede brought his wife and daughter home to Australia. They had two more children and raised a family.  His final years were spent teaching dentistry at the Perth Dental Hospital.

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Captain Bede James Smith Image Five

In September 1943, Bede was posted to England to prepare for the Allied invasion of Europe. He’s seated here (middle left), relaxing on a sunny day with his mates in the medical team. These men will be sharing tough times ahead, treating the wounded, working in field hospitals close to the front.

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Captain Bede James Smith Image Four

But the Army must have taken pity. Marg was pregnant now. Bede returned to Toronto in time for the birth of their first child in 1943.

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Captain Bede James Smith Image Three

After enlisting, Bede was posted to the frozen north of Canada, where the snow piled high and foot-long icicles hung down from the military huts.

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Captain Bede James Smith Image Two

Bede died in 1965 of a war-related illness, just after we’d moved from Sydney to Perth. He never discussed his military service with me. In later years, my mother told me what she knew. I’ve pieced together his life as a soldier, using military records, photos and objects.

Bede in the Canadian Army 1943

Capt Bede Smith, middle row seated on the left. Photo probably taken in the UK in 1943 or 1944

 The piece below is a first draft of a scene from my book about the life of Bede Smith

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Bound for Europe, 1943 

On 5 September 1943, Bede left the army transit camp in Windsor, Ontario and travelled by train to Halifax, where a carrier waited to transport the Canadian Fourth Armoured Division across the Atlantic. The SS Queen Elizabeth, had been stripped of its luxury fittings and converted into a troop ship. Repainted battleship grey, the modern ocean liner ran the Atlantic at high speed, zig-zagging to avoid encounters with enemy warships and U-boats. There were 13,000 personnel on board for the crossing. With so many troops, all needing to be berthed and fed, the operation was handled with military precision. Bede, like all the others, wore a coloured label indicating in which zone he was berthed. The ship's dining room held 2,000 and meals were served around the clock. No sooner had the last breakfast been served, than lunch began. After lunch the queues formed again for the first evening meal.

Six days after leaving Halifax, the ship landed safely in the United Kingdom. The invasion of Europe was imminent, but no one knew exactly when or where it would occur. All military intelligence was shrouded in secrecy. As it turned out, the Fourth Division would remain in the UK for another 10 months, undergoing rigorous training in an atmosphere of mounting tension.

Upon their arrival in Southampton, the Canadians were transported to a busy military camp in the town of Bordon, East Hampshire in the south of England. The once quiet country roads around Bordon growled with the flow of military vehicles coming and going. Situated in a picturesque landscape of rolling hills and lush green pastures, Bordon offered the troops some recreational opportunities off-base. Whenever he had the chance, Bede took a pass which allowed him to walk into the local town.

More than a month after arriving in Bordon, Bede was returning to barracks by foot along a winding country road. It was harvest time and the haystacks, piled high in the stubbled fields, were touched bronze by the setting sun. In the calm of the late afternoon, the only sound was his own footfall and the plaintive bleating of a lamb. Bede stopped along the road to inspect a flock of black-faced sheep curiously eyeing him from behind the hedgerow. Just then, true to form, a soft drizzle began to fall. The road became shiny and slick with oil residue – time to hurry back to barracks. He quickened his pace.

All of a sudden, came a loud rumble from behind. A vehicle bore down on him. There was a screech of brakes. Bede had no time to react before a truck loomed up and flung him side-ways into the ditch. He hit the ground with a thud, doubling over in pain.

A few yards up ahead the Bedford truck pulled over, its engine still running. A cloud of acrid smoke wafted back and Bede felt himself starting to retch. The driver leapt down from the truck cabin and ran back to where Bede sat dazed on the ground.

'Bloody hell. Sorry, mate. I didn't see you. That bend in the road. Are you OK?'
Bede looked down. The wool of his khaki army jacket was torn at the elbow. He tried to move and sit up, but winced in pain.
'Damn. It's my arm,' Bede said, a sharp tone to his voice.
His hand and arm had taken the full brunt of the fall. Blood congealed around a wound on his hand which was dirty with grit and gravel.
Bede tried to flex his hand.
'Ouch! Christ!'

The truck driver moved in closer. He was a pale, freckled young lad, with a cigarette hanging from his lower lip. He stared down at Bede and flicked his cigarette on the ground.
'Blimey. You're as white as a sheet.'
Bede sat up and moved his arm and shoulder again.
'I hope it's not broken,' he said, trying to remain civil.

Bede felt like he'd done ten rounds in the boxing ring and was down for the count. Finally he pulled himself up to his full height, shook himself off and straightened his uniform. The pants were soaked through from the muddy ditch.

At this point the driver, observing his rank, started up again.
'I'm dreadfully sorry, Captain.'
'Look. I'm OK.' This lad was starting to annoy him now.
'I'll take you to Bordon Camp.'
'That would make sense,' Bede said, a slight tone of sarcasm in his voice.

In the dwindling light they drove back to the army base. The driver attempted to make conversation, but Bede was occupied with his own thoughts. The injury weighed heavily on him. Some years previously, he had hurt himself playing cricket. Since then, he'd been plainly aware that his hands were his lifeline. Any accident could derail his future career in dentistry. And he hadn't even seen action in this war. He tried to put such bleak thoughts aside and remain calm.

It was dark by the time they saw the lights of Bordon Camp and drove through the security gates. Bede directed the driver to the front door of the hospital, where he hauled himself down from the truck and went indoors to find the duty doctor.

The enemy bares his teeth

Northern Ontario near Monteith, frozen lakes and rivers. Photograph taken from the air, April 2016

The Enemy Bares his Teeth

Monteith is hardly the place you would choose to spend a winter. The town is located in the backwoods of northern Ontario, half way between Toronto and Hudson Bay. In the 1930s it recorded the province's coldest minimum ever, when the temperature dropped to 65 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. Yet, in November 1942, I was posted there to work as an Army dentist in a field hospital at the Monteith internment camp.

I farewelled my wife Marg in Toronto and, in the company of a few other officers, boarded a steam train for the 400 mile trip north. To keep us from freezing to death in the shaky wooden carriage, rudimentary heating was provided, but the wind still managed to penetrate the cracks beneath the doors. We hunkered down inside our great coats, played cards and smoked to relieve the monotony. It was a twelve hour journey through a snowy Christmas-card landscape pockmarked with frozen lakes, as white as the lunar surface.

Monteith had been chosen as the site of internment Camp 23, because of its remoteness and inaccessibility – there were no roads into the camp and no means for prisoners to escape. The camp was surrounded by forest and had a barbed wire perimeter fence and several watch towers. The place held around 1600 inmates, mostly German prisoners of war or enemy aliens. During the day some of the men were put to work cutting lumber, and hauling the logs to a nearby lumber mill, using horse-drawn carts.

On the first morning at Monteith I met my chair assistant, a bull-headed man, as strong as a Kodiak bear. His name was Fergus and he was one of the inmates.

'What's a chap called Fergus doing in a place like this?' I asked.

He replied in a broad Scottish accent, 'well Captain, it's a long story. The Allies picked me up on the Continent. When I couldn't establish my bona fides, they deemed me an enemy alien and I ended up here.'

'That's rotten luck. OK then Fergus, let's get started. Who's our first patient?'

'He's a wee lad Matrose Bochwoldt. Bochwoldt is one of the German POWs picked up from the Bismarck.'

The battleship Bismarck, the pride of the German fleet, had been hunted down and sunk in the Atlantic by the Royal Navy in May 1941. Only 115 German seamen were plucked from the icy waters – the remaining 2000 perished. Bochwoldt was one of the fortunate few to be rescued and sent to Canada.

Fergus spoke a few words of German and offered to act as my interpreter.

'Can you ask the patient about his symptoms?'

'Bochwoldt is complaining about soreness and swelling at the back of his lower jaw, on the left side.'

I looked into the patient's mouth and his fetid breath stung my nostrils. From this and the angry-red gum line, I could see that he had an impacted wisdom tooth, which had become infected.

'Fergus, can you tell the patient I will need to sedate him, cut into the gum and remove the impacted tooth.'

Bochwoldt's eyes darted and he looked somewhat alarmed at this news.

'Tell him that if he managed to survive the fiery inferno on the Bismarck, and the gale force winds and freezing waters of the North Atlantic, then this mere tooth extraction will be a breeze.'

Walking back to my hut at the end of the first day at Camp 23, I reflected on the strangeness of it all. Here I was, an Aussie, in the frozen wilds of Northern Canada, on the periphery of a war. I had chanced upon a bizarre mix of bedfellows – a Scottish enemy alien and a German seaman, a survivor of the most notorious naval battle of the war, thus far. Finally, I had come face to face with the enemy, and the enemy had barred his teeth, but the encounter was not quite what I had expected.

From the life of Bede James Smith. Based on an interview with Marg Smith in 1998. The names of the Scottish chair assistant and German prisoner-of-war are fictitious.