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In the most hostile places on Earth, soldiers are never so exposed than in their letters home.
Over the past century, more than 100,000 Canadian soldiers have died on foreign soil.
They were bomber pilots, nurses, sailors, cooks, elite snipers and common foot-soldiers.
They have been kids who were lost the first time they excitedly raised their helmets in battle and veteran officers who, at long last, found a fight they couldn’t walk away from.
And besides the eternal respect of a nation for their sacrifice, almost all left behind something else — their final thoughts, mailed back to Canada.
In attic chests, tied with ribbon in drawers, pasted into scrapbooks, digitalized in historic archives and, during the Afghanistan conflict, saved in folders on email accounts, these letters home are echoes of important voices lost forever.
“They put a human face on war,” says Dr. Stephen Davies, a professor of history at Vancouver Island University.
For almost ten years, and through private donations, Davies has collected more than 10,000 letters and correspondents involving largely Canadian soldiers, dating back to the turn of the 20th Century. He has archived the notes online (www.canadianletters.ca), sending the originals back to the safe care of families.
“We’re not just dealing with abstract large numbers (of casualties). In the letters, they become real people.”
Between the lines of what Davies has collected, as well as other last letters independently gathered here by Sun Media, there are constant themes penned by the Canadian warriors — even those separated by eras.
They hunger for home cooking and reasons to laugh.
From muddy foxholes and camps built within danger zones, they simply ask for the comforts of normalcy while — almost to the soldier — offering up a certain assurance. That they will be OK. That they will be safe. That they will be home soon again.
As if we — safe, here in Canada — were the ones that needed inspiration to keep marching on.
And until often terse notices of death finally arrived, these lines did comfort their loved-ones. Made them hope. Believe that the words would just keep coming.
Now — especially at this time of year — they should still deliver a poignant message, about what they were willing to put on the line for us all.