I've written this for and about the unsung heroes of the Second World War.

Especially one. My late Dad.

Since the guns fell silent in 1945, much has been written of those who risked their lives.

Honouring their memory is paramount to those who remember their stories -- sometimes revealed with hesitation and rarely shared, as was my experience with Dad, a paymaster who joined the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) in 1939, and Gramps, a Glasgow trench soldier in France during the First World War.

Both John W. "Jack" Robertson and Archibald Hugh Macdonald are gone now, but I'll never forget them.

As for their stories, the contrasts were worlds apart.

Each Nov. 11, ever-thinning ranks of veterans gather at war memorials to lay wreaths and remember. For those who know, their medals are clues to what they did.

I reported this August on the Dominion Institute inviting veterans to share experiences and mementoes for a permanent record that delves into the people, not just facts and statistics. That's fabulous.

I've met and written about many veterans, and long ago I came to understand why some readily share their experiences, some only talk if asked and others decline, without the reason spoken.

As the years pass and their vision fades, backs stoop and remaining hair turns silky silver, veterans who didn't do battle are often forgotten amidst stories of sacrifice and daring. But they, too, contributed their youth.

Married just one year, my parents had a variety store on Queen St. W., near the Gladstone Hotel, eking out a living at the tail-end of the Great Depression.

In a Montreal militia unit during his teens, Dad was the son of Capt. David B. Robertson, a chartered accountant and First World War training officer with the Black Watch, and nephew of Lt. William Robertson, a Toronto insurance agent who trained soldiers in Niagara Camp.

Both were too old to be sent overseas.

Even at age 29, "joining up" came naturally for Dad, as it did for many. For some reason, lost from my memory now, he decided on the RCAF.

After reporting to Manning Depot No. 1 at Exhibition Place, he was shipped to London, Ont. CFB Trenton came next, where he was promoted to flying officer after working his way up from sergeant.

Despite Mom expecting their first child, Dad got his sailing orders and left for England, spending much of the time sick. He had an iffy stomach and the seas were rough.

After Red Hill, where Canadians were dispatched, he went to Brighton. His final posting was Warrington, now a cattle pasture near a housing estate in the Midlands, but then a Royal Air Force base. Dad worked with many Canadians there, meeting pilots and crew who escaped from occupied Europe being debriefed by intelligence officers about what they saw. A senior accounts officer, Pop was among the most popular, since he paid in cash -- not his, mind you. It's a paymaster joke.

His mementoes include a few official military photos: Rows of officers, with names and Canadian hometowns on the back; him with older staff in the base office; one in the officers' mess, where Dad stands "reading" at a bookshelf, a pipe clamped between his lips.

A keen amateur photographer, he obtained a rare pass in 1943 that permitted him to use his folding camera. Unlike official photos, the locales had to be unidentifiable, in case they fell into the wrong hands and the base could be identified.

A few show Dad with buddies. In one he's wearing "battledress" gear, webbing on his helmet, holding his service revolver, grinning outside the barracks.

CLOSEST TO BEARING ARMS

Other photos are of best pals: Ed "Ned" Williams, later a Montreal Star advertising salesman before retiring in Ottawa; and Ernie Silsby, an aircraft engine mechanic who retired from the RCAF in the 1960s, serving at Downsview, in Edmonton and, finally, at Uplands in Ottawa.

Two snaps, obviously taken by them in turns, show Dad and "Uncle" Ernie sitting on a "4,000-pound dud" bomb, according to their handwritten notes.

Such photos were typical, they told me years ago. The poses were the closest non-combatants got to "bearing arms."

But if Britain was invaded, they'd have had to fight and Dad was a crack shot, starting in high school. Only at targets, mind you.

There are also photos of him on leave with buddies, dressed for golfing or riding bicycles, in "civvy" clothes on a birthday. Sometimes he took a train to Scotland to visit his Aunt Barbara Robertson, who lived in her late parent's home on Forfar Rd. in Dundee until 1949.

It was on one such visit that Dad got a phone call from Montreal, where my mother, Darene -- "Rene" to friends and family -- was with her parents.

She had lost their first child during childbirth.

He swore to me the sombre wraiths of his grandparents appeared earlier that night at the foot of his bed, at the exact hour Mark died due to complications.

His commanding officer sympathized, but with a war on, naturally he was not allowed to go home. The day Dad sailed aboard a transport in 1945, he took photos of long lines of men waiting to board the ship.

In Ottawa, where I was born in 1948, he and Mom raised me and my sister, Shelagh, who's three years younger. Like many veterans, Dad said little about the war.

The only time he went back to Great Britain, 35 years later, provided a glimpse into what can lie deep in the memories of those who served far from battles, bombs or the drone of enemy aircraft. It was a side I never saw before, or again.

Enthusiastic about all types of history, we headed to the Imperial War Museum in London in 1980, before going to Scotland on a bus tour. Mom, born in England, who came to Canada in the late 1920s, decided to go shopping.

All went well for the hour or so we walked through the old Bedlam Hospital, with its recreation of a First World War trench, displays of guns, bombs, uniforms, medals, telegraph equipment, documents and photos.

It was a fun guy thing, a father-and-son day.

In the last great hall, aircraft from both wars were displayed, several dangling on wires from the ceiling, others standing on the floor.

Gingerly stepping inside the wingless, engineless frame of a Second World War bomber, I walked up the sloped metal floor towards the cockpit, keeping my almost 6-foot-1 frame bent to avoid bumping the ceiling. I was half-way up when I realized something was wrong.

Dad wasn't there. Turning, I saw for the first time in my life a look of distress on his pale face, his forehead beaded with sweat, his eyes wide.

"Dad, Dad, are you okay?" I asked of my 70-year-old parent, the stalwart 5-foot-10 man always of military bearing, now looking old and vulnerable. "I ... I can't breath, Lad," he replied, staring.

Taking his hand, I led my father down the steps, gently questioning.

"I don't think it's my heart," he whispered. "But I can't be here. Can we go outside? If that's okay." What a question!

Walking slowly, my hand on his arm, we slowly stepped into the sunshine.

Still pale and shaky, Dad sat on the stone steps. I loosened his tie.

Within a few minutes, his complexion improved, his breathing almost normal. I can't remember if I got him water, but likely did. There was no tea nearby to serve the elixir of life that was always a bastion in times of stress.

Before we left, I asked him what had happened.

Dad couldn't explain, exactly. Puzzled, all he could recall was overwhelming claustrophobia.

OVERTAKEN BY EMPATHY

"I knew a lot of chaps," he began, looking off somewhere to another time, another place.

Then it hit me. Standing in that long-grounded, cramped bomber, Dad must have been overtaken by empathy for the anguish and terror of men he had known or could imagine.

The "chaps" included an officer whose golf clubs he bought, an RAF visor cap, jacket and slacks from Horne Brothers Ltd. in London that were better than the RCAF one he was issued.

He'd talked to officers in the mess who made it back after bailing out of doomed aircraft -- the lucky ones who overcame G-forces and jumped or crawled from the belly of a bomber or fighter gliding or spiralling out of control towards the earth or ocean below. Dad, never on a mission or shot at, kept the receipt from the Oxford St. store, where uniforms and gear left unclaimed by men who never returned were available at a discount price.

His clubs, with another officer's name crossed out on the golf bag, were bought during a "mess sale." Such non-personal items were often sold, with money sent to relatives or used for drinks downed as a toast after someone went missing on a mission or was confirmed killed.

Called back to duty in 1946, after a year with War Assets Disposals in Ottawa, Dad stayed with the RCAF for five years, mostly working out of Rockcliffe station in Ottawa. He also spent about a year driving on weekends to and from the capital, living Monday to Friday in barracks at the air base built during the war at Mountainview, south of Belleville.

Later with Defense Construction (1951) Limited, then Canada Life as an insurance agent, he then became a federal tax audit accountant.

When we moved to a farmhouse near Almonte in 1952, Dad joined the Princess Louise Dragoon Guards, a militia unit of the type more common then than now.

I was about eight or nine when sons were invited to a social evening and saw a wilderness survival film for soldiers who might get stuck in the forest or tundra near the Arctic.

Proudly, during his last year before having to retire from the "Plugs" at age 49, Dad was "on parade" for Queen Elizabeth in Ottawa in 1959.

Mom burned his moldy RCAF cap -- he never forgave her -- but only after removing the badge she later sewed onto the blue blazer.

He wore it as treasurer of the Royal Canadian Legion poppy fund in Belleville, where he was transferred by Revenue Canada in 1968, and joined the RCAF Association.

Dad's four medals, two issued to all who served the Commonwealth, one for volunteering, plus a bronze Queen's service medal, are treasured mementoes.

When he died in 1992, at 81, the RCAFA Wing he rarely visited, despite my late Mom encouraging him to attend social evenings and dances, formed an honour guard at his funeral, organized by Lorne Foley, who knew him through me.

Also a proud RCAF veteran who served overseas during the war, he was the grandfather of three girls, including my godchild, and ex-commander of the Air Force cadet unit in Belleville. At Dad's funeral, Lorne -- at whose funeral in 2008 I delivered a eulogy -- quietly emphasized that while many of the veterans who heeded his call didn't know him well, he was one of theirs.

As long as I live, he will remain in my heart, for all the right reasons, mostly for just being my Dad.

But at this time of year, especially, I remember his six years of wartime service, largely un-heralded, perhaps only best understood by him.

Or, perhaps not.

IAN.ROBERTSON@SUNMEDIA.CA