Lest We Forget - Volume 17 www.legionnl.ca 119 A Shattered Soul – War takes its toll “He got the whole world, in his hands, He got the whole wide world, in his hands, He got the whole world, in his hands, He got the whole world, in his hands.”(1) News flash! The Germans invaded Poland breaking international law. Prime Minister Chamberlain of Britain ordered them to withdraw. But as we know, Adolf Hitler had conquering the world on his mind. Therefore, Britain, and its dominion; Newfoundland, declared war in September 1939. Come on boys let’s take an adventure across the Atlantic Sea, There’s no excitement here for us, let’s chase the ocean breeze. We’ll join the British navy and sail the ocean seas, And when we reach ol’ England, we’ll be footloose and fancy free. “Roll out the barrel we’ll have a barrel of fun, Roll out the barrel we’ve got the blues on the run. Zing boom tararrel, ring out a song of good cheer. Now’s the time to roll the barrel for the gang’s all here.”(2) Subsequently, we took the train to St. John’s, in the fall of ’39, And spent the night, altogether, being processed and assigned. We were the eleventh draft of 100 men rearing to go at any time, But there was an outbreak of diphtheria, so the orders were declined. Inoculation was administered and a further 100 men were called. Our troop of 198 men were ready to sail, as two went A.W.O.L. They took a picture of our contingent, donned in suits and ties, and bunched all together. I wrote a quick note on the back and addressed it to Ethel Hillier; my mother. I dropped it off to the recruiting office where they routed it to my home, The message read as follows and I quote it, verbatim: continued .... (This is a short story/musical about my father, Silas Henry Hillier, R.N.) As I got older I became interested in writing about dad’s World War II involvement. I had a fair amount of information given to me by Dad, his mother and other wartime participants. Most Veterans were very reluctant to talk about the war, so it took me months of research to gather additional facts about my father’s peril of horror. I retrieved some information from documented accounts by his fellow shipmates and some data I obtained from historical writings around that specific date. I chronicled my father’s life from when he enlisted in November 1939 to the time of his sorrowful and heart-breaking passing in 2001, at the age of 79.
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