eager and daring young man and his worried mother. Information for this story was based on The Dictionary of Newfoundland English, edited by G.M. Story, W. J. Kirwin, and J. D. A. Widdowson (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982).
4 Swiling is an old Newfoundland term for sealing.
HOME FROM
THE WAR
I n the fall of 1915, three young men left their tiny settlement in Notre Dame Bay on the north coast of Newfoundl and and made their way to the interior town of Grand Falls. There they caught the train to take them to the capital city of St. Johnâs. This 330-mile trip was just the start of a longer and more terrible journey than they ever could have anticipated, a journey that would mark each of them forever and change them in ways they would never have imagined. They had left home united in a common purpose â to enlist in the First Newfoundland Regiment and to go off to war to fight for their country.
The morning of July 1, 1916, eight months later, saw them, along with 798 other Newfoundland soldiers, awaiting the order to rise from their trenches and advance to engage the enemy at close quarters.
Five months after that, the same three young men, none yet having seen his twentieth birthday, were welcomed back home by the people of their small village. The people rejoiced in the fact that the three had survived the Battle of the Somme while so many of their comrades had perished under the withering machine-gun fire they had faced that fateful day. Their homecoming was a cause for great celebration, for only 69 of the 801 soldiers who had attempted to cross the no-manâs land that separated them from the Germans had been left unscathed. All the others had been either killed or wounded.
The three young men who came back to this village, however, were not quite the same boys who had left. They were aged beyond their years and damaged beyond repair. They were nothing like the lads the community had previously known, and were clearly incapable of ever returning to the lives they had known before the war. Nevertheless, in the outport way, they would, despite their infirmities, be embraced in a communal blanket of love and support for as long as they might live. In the eyes of some, however, they would always remain objects of pity and compassion.
Elijah was the oldest. He had been eighteen when he enlisted. John and Cecil, both seventeen at the time, had lied convincingly enough to the recruitment officer to get themselves enlisted as well. Elijah was the first to come back home. He arrived two weeks before the others.
Elijah had not been wounded in the fighting in France, at least not physically. No lasting scar of any type marred his body, and, from that perspective, he was as healthy and as robust as he had been on the day he left. But for him, the big guns of the Somme still thundered in his ears and the carnage of Beaumont Hamel was still vivid in his mind. He simply could not forget and could not find the daily rhythm needed to get on with the rest of his life. He was trapped in a cycle of continuing horror from which he could not escape.
He walked. From morning to night, day after day, that was all he did. At first the people of the community were puzzled by the sight of this young man tramping for endless hours around the settlement and the surrounding countryside, seemingly lost within himself. But they soon grasped the undeniable reality that, as Uncle Ezra Porter put it, Elijah was shell-shocked. That realization, however, did not distract from their affection and respect for the young man, for had not the boy been prepared to make the supreme sacrifice on their behalf, to ensure their freedom and their way of life? To them, no matter what his condition, he was a war hero, and he was now theirs to look after and care for as best they could.
Elijah did not usually awake to begin his long periods of walking until late in the morning, quite often noon or even later. It was not laziness, but simply
4 Swiling is an old Newfoundland term for sealing.
HOME FROM
THE WAR
I n the fall of 1915, three young men left their tiny settlement in Notre Dame Bay on the north coast of Newfoundl and and made their way to the interior town of Grand Falls. There they caught the train to take them to the capital city of St. Johnâs. This 330-mile trip was just the start of a longer and more terrible journey than they ever could have anticipated, a journey that would mark each of them forever and change them in ways they would never have imagined. They had left home united in a common purpose â to enlist in the First Newfoundland Regiment and to go off to war to fight for their country.
The morning of July 1, 1916, eight months later, saw them, along with 798 other Newfoundland soldiers, awaiting the order to rise from their trenches and advance to engage the enemy at close quarters.
Five months after that, the same three young men, none yet having seen his twentieth birthday, were welcomed back home by the people of their small village. The people rejoiced in the fact that the three had survived the Battle of the Somme while so many of their comrades had perished under the withering machine-gun fire they had faced that fateful day. Their homecoming was a cause for great celebration, for only 69 of the 801 soldiers who had attempted to cross the no-manâs land that separated them from the Germans had been left unscathed. All the others had been either killed or wounded.
The three young men who came back to this village, however, were not quite the same boys who had left. They were aged beyond their years and damaged beyond repair. They were nothing like the lads the community had previously known, and were clearly incapable of ever returning to the lives they had known before the war. Nevertheless, in the outport way, they would, despite their infirmities, be embraced in a communal blanket of love and support for as long as they might live. In the eyes of some, however, they would always remain objects of pity and compassion.
Elijah was the oldest. He had been eighteen when he enlisted. John and Cecil, both seventeen at the time, had lied convincingly enough to the recruitment officer to get themselves enlisted as well. Elijah was the first to come back home. He arrived two weeks before the others.
Elijah had not been wounded in the fighting in France, at least not physically. No lasting scar of any type marred his body, and, from that perspective, he was as healthy and as robust as he had been on the day he left. But for him, the big guns of the Somme still thundered in his ears and the carnage of Beaumont Hamel was still vivid in his mind. He simply could not forget and could not find the daily rhythm needed to get on with the rest of his life. He was trapped in a cycle of continuing horror from which he could not escape.
He walked. From morning to night, day after day, that was all he did. At first the people of the community were puzzled by the sight of this young man tramping for endless hours around the settlement and the surrounding countryside, seemingly lost within himself. But they soon grasped the undeniable reality that, as Uncle Ezra Porter put it, Elijah was shell-shocked. That realization, however, did not distract from their affection and respect for the young man, for had not the boy been prepared to make the supreme sacrifice on their behalf, to ensure their freedom and their way of life? To them, no matter what his condition, he was a war hero, and he was now theirs to look after and care for as best they could.
Elijah did not usually awake to begin his long periods of walking until late in the morning, quite often noon or even later. It was not laziness, but simply
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