“After the Battle of Ortona and after the Battle of Monte Cassino 3 and we stood where we buried our people, right there. In Ortona we buried about 55 in the church yard…Looking at all these graves makes you wonder what it’s all about.”

Retired Col. David Fairweather sits on a white wingback chair, hands crossed, lips firm waiting for the click of the shutter. He is a small man now, with piercing blue eyes and a soft voice. He has allowed me into his immaculately clean North Vancouver apartment on a cloudy afternoon.

He’s been telling me war stories for an hour and while he stayed well on track detailing the six years of active duty in Europe with the Seaforth Highlanders from 1939 to 1945, some of my questions have clearly taken their toll. Questions about the death of his eldest brother, the silent hardship of his mother who watched her four sons leave home to join the Canadian Forces  and talk of his fallen comrades, whose faces still flash through his mind from time-to-time.

Col. Fairweather was born on September 20, 1919 and grew up in Maple Ridge on a chicken farm, which his father bought in 1922 after they emigrating from Scotland. His father was a veteran of the Boer War, and his family prided themselves on on their military heritage. An ambitious man, Col. Fairweather joined the Seaforth Highlanders at age 19 and worked up the ranks of the military, serving 44 years,  taking command of his regiment as honorary colonel of the reserves until he retired in 1995.

The regiment became a part of his life and identity and when he married his wife Beverly Grace in 1947, she accepted his role and their lives became intertwined with the regiment, forming friendships that lasted a lifetime.  “When times were tough and there was no money, there was always the regiment,” he tells me.

At 91, he has not forgotten his experience of WWII. He has a razor sharp memory for dates, and he uses them to navigate through the hard parts, the parts he’s not so used to talking about.

***

Leni T. Goggins: Tell me about the beginning.

Col. David Fairweather: When war broke out in 1939 I joined up along with [my four] other brothers. My eldest brother [George] joined the engineers in North Vancouver, one joined the New Westminster regiment, and one joined the navy. So we all split up.

LTG: What did your mother think of this?

CDF: Didn’t say too much but I think it hurt her a bit. She didn’t say anything at all. I trained with the Seaforths here in Vancouver for three months. And we went overseas on December 15, 1939. We travelled across Canada by train. Got on a ship called the HMS Andes and set off for Great Britain…It took five days crossing the Atlantic and we landed in a place called Greenock, Scotland. From there we went down south to Aldershot [England], a big training base. And we were there for almost six months.

LTG: What was the training like?

CDF: It was square bashing1 mainly, very little maneuvers. So after six months we moved out and we were part of the 1st Division Armoured Battalion and we trained all over southern England pretty well.

LTG: Did they tell you what you were going to be doing?

CDF: We were the mobile force and we were expecting an invasion but nothing happened…we were ready to move where we were needed.

LTG: During this time what were your thoughts about your foe, about Germany,  the enemy you were preparing to fight?

CDF: Really we didn’t think about it too much…All we knew was the newspapers. And of course there was no fighting in Germany at the time, it was all in North Africa and we were quite intrigued with the way that Montgomery was making headway in Africa.  The only action we saw was the air raids. We went through the September 15, 1940 bombing, it was a big one. They started bombing in earnest but we were 20-30 miles outside of London…We were all ready to go into action, there was a feeling of ‘Why are we left out ?’ — stupid in a way. I know just before we left for Sicily we were all wondering why we hadn’t gone. Frankly I’m glad we didn’t go because we were very poorly trained.

LTG: What was life like then, when you were in England? Were you spending time with the locals?

CDF: Very little time with locals, no, I must say we did go to the pub quite a bit. We didn’t do much drinking, we played cards and darts. We spent almost three years in England, 1939 through to 1942. I went overseas as a private and I moved up through the ranks to a sergeant and I was picked for officer training, so in August 1942 I was sent all the way back to Canada. We came back to Gordon Head in Victoria and I did my three months basic officer training [before going overseas again].

LTG: The training at Gordon Head, was it a lot more vigorous that your previous training?

CDF: Yes we got more tactics, more know-how. We learned how to fight. I arrived back in England in August of 1943. So I had been away almost a whole year from the battalion.

LTG: What was that like coming back into it?

CDF: The battalion had left, they were in Sicily at the time, August 10, 1943 so I missed going. Unfortunately when I got back to Aldershot again I saw on the noticeboard my older brother [George] had been killed with the battalion.

LTG: That’s how you found out?

CDF: Yep. He had gone to the Engineers and when he heard that we were going overseas in ‘39 he transferred to the Seaforths and then unfortunately he was killed in 1943.

LTG: What was your reaction to that?

CDF: Oh, I cant say very much.

Col. Fairweather pauses to catch his breath and his eyes fill with tears.

CDF: Sorry. We were very close the two of us. He was a sergeant at the time and so that was in October 1943. And shortly after that I was going on draft to North Africa. And that was our holding unit. We were there for about six weeks, then I joined the battalion in a place called Ortona where we had a terrific battle there. That’s where we had the big Christmas dinner we still celebrate here in Vancouver.2

Into Battle: Ortona and the enemy.

CDF: On Christmas day in 1943 the Quartermaster proposed to the CO [Commanding Officer] that we have a Christmas dinner and the CO said OK. So Captain Cameron, who organized it, got busy scrounging and he came up with a dinner. We came back company by company to the church to have a very nice Christmas dinner. I was in D company and we were the last ones in at night. We come into the church at 5 o’clock at night, it was just getting dusk. We couldn’t go back up,  it was dark, and the town of Ortona was in rubble — you couldn’t move in the street without making a heck of a noise so we had to sleep in the church that night. Which we did on the floor. We end up into action the next day and unfortunately three of my men were killed going back up the line, which was about four or five blocks away. So Christmas dinner was a memory in my mind.

LTG: So when you finally were in battle did your impression of your foes change? Did you ever come face to face with a German solider?

CDF: Yes, I had personally.  I missed Sicily so my first battle was Ortona where we did house to house.

LTG: Amazing battle to be your first.

CDF: Yeah and unfortunately yes, we did come face-to-face,  but it was usually grenades and tommy guns.

LTG: So later in life,  have you met Germans?

CDF: No. Two or three years ago a group of our people [from the Seaforth Highlanders association] went back to Ortona and there was a group of German soldiers came in and joined them. I must say I wasn’t too keen to do that, so I didn’t go.

LTG: It brought up frustration?

CDF: They’re the ones that we fought in the city, paratroopers.

LTG: I think that’s what’s so interesting about the last 100 years of history – at one moment this person is your enemy and then years later they’re not and the world is at peace again. I wonder, for a solider, does that ever change for you, do you ever lose that anger, or that hate?

CDF: Personally I don’t really hate them, I just didn’t want to mix with them. They were doing their job and we were doing ours.

LTG: You have a very practical mind. That’s probably why you lasted so long, you’re mentally strong.

Col. Fairweather smiles and nods.

LTG: Was there a moment that brought home the reality of war?

CDF: I think after the Battle of Ortona and after the Battle of Monte Cassino 3 and we stood where we buried our people, right there. In Ortona we buried about 55 in the church yard…Looking at all these graves makes you wonder what it’s all about. And then the same thing at Monte Cassino, where we lost about the same number of men in one day.  Three days after the battle was over and looking at all those graves made me think what the heck’s it all about? And I must say that it did give me a little twinge when I saw that and it was just a fraction of what went on in the rest of the war. Just a fraction.

LTG: What happened after Ortona?

CDF: I got through that one OK. And then we went into rest for two weeks in Ortona, after the battle was over on December 28, 1943. We moved back up in the line again into what they call a static position where we dug in the trenches. Where it rained and rained and rained…We had little pup tents over our slitties [slit trench]. And we were in there for over two or three weeks. I took a fighting patrol, took a prisoner and on the way out I was wounded so I went back to hospital myself for six weeks.

LTG How were you wounded?

CDF: Shrapnel.

LTG: Do you remember that moment?

CDF: I remember the big bang and two of my men were quite badly wounded. We were coming back from this patrol and the Germans laid down a lot of fire and they got us. So anyway I ended up in hospital for six weeks, in a place called Bury in southern England….Six weeks and then I was posted back to the regiment and I arrived back in April of 1944. We were on the East coast of Italy at the time and we moved back to the West coast and we went into action in a place called Monte Cassino and we had another bad one there and we lost I think about 55 killed and about 120 wounded in one day in that battle. And again I got through that one.

LTG: Were you surprised?

CDF: Yeah, grateful…We spent all that summer fighting up the East Coast, up as far as Rimini and we were there for the rest of the year.3.

Surprises at War

LTG: I’d like to ask about day to day life in the war – I know it was six years of your life, but were there any memorable surprises about daily life?

CDF: I’ll tell you a funny thing that happened to me. I was sitting at the mess dinner next to Major-General Bertram Meryl Hoffmeister, one of our best Generals. He was a CO in Sicily and he said to me “Do you recall any experience that really stuck in your mind?” “Yes, sir.” I said.  “I took a fighting patrol out one night,  aiming to get a prisoner and got way out in front of our lines. And I was lying there looking, just pushing coffee, wondering how I could take them out and one of my corporals crawled up beside me and said ‘What’s going on?’ and joking I said ‘You realize that we’re the two most forward soldiers in Italy right now?’ And he crawled back.” Hoffman said, “Well you had the whole eighth army behind you,” and I said “Yeah, but they were all behind me!” That’s an experience that stuck in my memory for a long time.

Victory

CDF: We spent another winter in Italy. And again, “sunny Italy” is not sunny Italy in the wintertime…We were there all winter of 1944 and in March of 1945 they moved us across country to Pisa. We got on our transport there and went up into Belgium…From Belgium we went into Holland and we were in Holland, in action, for six weeks when the war ended. May 8th 1945 our battalion marched into Amsterdam and we liberated the city of Amsterdam. VE-Day5 it’s called.

LTG: And what was that like?

CDF: Absolutely fantastic! Supposedly almost a million people lining the roads on the way  in and into the city itself, into Dam Square, it was just absolutely massive. That’s where we did a bit of fraternizing with the locals and they were very friendly of course.We were quite amazed and of course, glad it was over.  We all had a feeling of, I guess deep happiness really that it was over. The war was over in Germany, Italy in Europe but still on in Japan. I had volunteered to go to Japan.

LTG: Why did you volunteer to go to Japan?

CDF: I just wanted to see it finished. When I got home, my father, he’s Scottish,  I told him and he said “You’re daft. You’re daft!” [laughs] Coming home we were half way across the Atlantic when we heard that the bomb had been dropped and the war was over. So that was a big relief too.  I was glad it was over, very glad.

Peace

LTG: So when you came back to Canada did you feel that peace was a possibility?

CDF: Well we were told it would. Chamberlain said “peace in our time” — well that was a bunch of hooey. We thought it was over and then four years later there was the Korean war. And then Vietnam with the Americans and that was a terrible thing. I don’t think there will ever be peace. Look at today there’s still rumblings all over the world.

Saying Goodbye

LTG: Your brother George, after the war ended, was his body returned to Canada?

CDF: I’ll show you something.

Col. Fairweather takes out his photo album and shows me photos of him as a young soldier, memorabilia from the Christmas dinner in Ortona and letters written by his brother George. He shows me an image of four crosses jutting out of a desolate landscape where his brother was killed in battle by German tank fire, along with three others, outside of Barenello, Italy on October 6, 1943. The bodies were later moved to Moro River Cemetery, Italy.

CDF: I located where they were buried and went and took the photo. They were buried right where they fell.

LTG: Do you feel that your brothers death was a result of bad training?

CDF: No, not at this time. Quickly after a couple of weeks of action you were trained pretty good…One thing about my brother George is he didn’t expect to come back. I’ve got a letter here he figured he wasn’t going to make it. And he told me this when I left to come back, having a drink in the pub he said “I don’t think I’ll see you again.” It was one of those premonitions that came true.

LTG: So you think that he really knew?

CDF: Yeah he did…I’ve heard of a number of people having this premonition that they wouldn’t make it

LTG: Did you?

CDF: No

LTG: Not even after your brother passed?

CDF: No. I figured I’d make it.

LTG: And you did.

CDF: I did.