ERIN – Memories of wartime radio broadcasts and army vehicle convoys rolling through Erin village turned into a life-long passion for Erin Legion member Doug Kirkwood.
And now, 14 years in the making, Kirkwood, 83, has published a book featuring the people of Erin and district all the way back to the War of 1812 entitled “We Will Remember Them”: The Men and Women of Erin and District.
“I’ve always been historically minded,” Kirkwood said. “In my little library here, I haven’t counted but there’s probably three or four hundred books in there and very, very few of them are fiction.
“I don’t read fiction. There’s enough real things happening in the world without reading things that are made up. Just the way I look at it.”
Growing up in the midst of the Second World War, Kirkwood remembers what it was like on the home front.
“I remember going to a one room school,” Kirkwood said. “The war was on then but a teacher – we had a great big poster, an airman in his underwear you might say – had cut out parts, each day we’d paste another little part of his uniform or his equipment.”
And then there were the convoys of military vehicles that would roll into town. Sometimes they’d go right through, and other times the soldiers would stop in town for lunch.
As a young boy, Kirkwood and his friends would be out on lunch from school and be excited to see the soldiers. They’d even run errands into town to buy chocolate bars or other supplies for the soldiers, who weren’t allowed to leave the convoy.
“The odd time, unfortunately, you couldn’t find who the soldier was that gave it to you so we were hoping they didn’t think we were just stealing it or keeping it for ourselves,” Kirkwood said with a laugh. “So that was a great thing.
“Of course (if) we got them something maybe they might give us 10 cents or a quarter, that would be a big thing.”
All these experiences and more are outlined in his book.
“We Will Remember Them”: The Men and Women of Erin and District is a 360-page chronological look at the men and women in Erin and district, from the pioneers in 1820, including Kirkwood’s great, great grandparents, up to 2006, when Lieutenant William “Bill” Turner was killed in Afghanistan. The Erin Legion held his funeral and he is buried in the Erin cemetery.
“Just about 200 yards away where his father was brought up and where his grandparents lived,” Kirkwood said.
“So he’s in the same family plot as they are.
However, the book is not just about the veterans and those whose names are on the cenotaph.
Kirkwood included information about different organizations that contributed to the war effort, mainly women and patriotic societies.
“I put it in context of world affairs,” Kirkwood said. “So like the Second World War, then you drag in President (Franklin) Roosevelt and (Joseph) Stalin and (Winston) Churchill and people like that just to let [readers] know what’s going on in the world at the same time this was happening in the local communities.
“So it’s all mixed in there together.”
While Kirkwood researched much of what happened between the War of 1812 and the First World War, the information he gathered about the World Wars was largely from personal experience and interviews.
Kirkwood’s family owned a gristmill in Erin and many of the soldiers and airmen who came back from WWI became farmers and would come in. Kirkwood got to know them.
One such soldier was Albert McBride from Belfountain.
“In World War One there was millions of horses that were slaughtered, killed, scared to death and so on and so forth, worked to death,” Kirkwood said. “And [McBride] felt bad about these horses and things like that.”
Kirkwood was also able to access WWI veterans’ medical records and other information to ensure the stories were correct.
Many accounts in the book are from interviews with people who lived through war times and contributors who added to the first-hand accounts, he said
Kirkwood also used letters about WWI that were published in the Erin Advocate and the Acton Free Press. While he used the same method in WWII there weren’t as many personal letters.
“I’m not really trying to write about the war itself other than the local people involved in it because there’s thousands of books on wars,” Kirkwood said. “So I don’t need to write about that but I tried to put it in context of the bigger picture when [soldiers are] writing about it.”
He also used the records available on WWI veterans to gather information that sometimes families didn’t even know about, because their loved one wouldn’t talk about their experiences when they were alive.
He was careful not to publish information without ensuring it was okay with family members, if he could track them down.
One such contact wrote back to Kirkwood saying he was so thankful he found out more about his father, Bonar Magill Sr., and uncle, Pearson (Pete) Magill’s time in the war. Kirkwood provided information and photographs the family hadn’t seen before.
“His own father, he knew he was a prisoner of war (in Germany), he had heard of starvation stuff but he survived and he’d come to work in the Erin shoe factory after the war but he didn’t really know what his father went through other than he was a prisoner of war,” Kirkwood said.
“I was able to track down different news articles, the prison camp that he was in, and the International Red Cross, how they were involved in inspecting it and so on and complaining about the conditions and stuff like that.”
Pearson was on a Canadian Navy war ship that was torpedoed and many people died.
Kirkwood was also able to find out some interesting information about other Erin army men in both World Wars.
Gordon Hall from Erin Township was in Italy during WWII and was recruited from the Royal Canadian Regiment (RCR) to supplement the Devil’s Brigade, a joint U.S./Canada special service force that was trained like commandos and all members were trained on German and enemy weapons.
He was with them during their operations in Italy and their advance into France.
He then returned to the Canadian Army and fought in Holland and Germany.
“They would sneak in by night and so on and they blew up bridges and the Germans are the one’s who called them the Devils,” Kirkwood said.
“They called them the Black Devils because they come at night all in black and they would kill somebody and sometimes they even left a note, ‘We were here.’”
There were also three men from Erin who were part of the Devil’s Brigade that went up north to clear out the Japanese from the Aleutian Islands.
“The Japanese captured the Aleutian Islands that belonged to Alaska,” Kirkwood said.
“That was the only American territory that was captured during World War Two.”
Some more personal experience came in when Kirkwood shared information about his great uncle Edward Terry (Dron).
Terry lived to be about 103, but, he never wanted to talk about his experiences in war. However, when he was about 90 years old he shared some information with Kirkwood. Before that all Kirkwood knew was that his leg had been amputated in WWI.
However, there was more to his story. Terry went to join the army when the war began; however, he was only five foot four and was turned away. The next year he went back and the same recruiting officer allowed him to join because the military needed more men.
While overseas, his amputation wasn’t his only injury, something Kirkwood didn’t know before their interview.
Terry was first wounded in the side, sent to a hospital in England, healed and was sent back out on the lines. Next he was wounded somewhere else and was treated at a field hospital but refused to go to a general hospital in England.
“He said ‘I was afraid they were going to send me home,’” Kirkwood said.
“Many soldiers are glad to be wounded and be shipped home.”
However, Terry was eventually sent home when he lost his foot.
“I wrote about him a fair bit because it was a family member and of course he’s not alive anymore, doesn’t have any family, so I don’t feel I’m revealing something that shouldn’t be revealed.”
For WWII veterans Kirkwood remembers most of them and was able to meet many and talk to them. He has about 200 photos of WWII veterans and about 100 of WWI veterans.
Kirkwood also added his own memories of Victory in Europe Day on May 7, 1945. He said he was let out of school early and the fire siren on top of town hall rang off and on all day.
“The war is over, and people were celebrating,” he said. “And that evening I remember the parade through the streets and they had an effigy of Hitler hanging on the back of a truck and then they burned him.
“They did the same thing in Hillsburgh pretty well.”
In 1946, the village held a three day celebration over the Aug. 1 holiday weekend for all the veterans returning home.
The veterans received a signet ring and the families of soldiers who lost their lives in battle received a special plaque from Erin Township and Erin Village.
“We Will Remember Them”: The Men and Women of Erin and District is now available.
Kirkwood asks for a $25 donation to the Erin Legion Poppy Fund for a copy.
“I don’t get a cent out of it,” he said. “It’s just stuff I do on my own and pay for myself.”
It will also be available at local libraries and the Wellington County Museum.
Those interested in obtaining a copy of the book can contact the Erin Legion at 519-833-7467, 519-833-2212 or erincanadianlegion@bell.net. They can also contact Kirkwood directly at 905-845-8477 or doug.kirkwood@sympatico.ca.
“I hope people learn about the people that went before us, the sacrifices they made and so on,” Kirkwood said.
