I must admit – the first time I ever walked into the Legion here in Canmore it was with very mixed feelings. I was born in Germany in 1964 and the war was long over by then. But Germany had started and lost both world wars.
I grew up with a lot of war guilt. History class hammered it in again and again.
Alongside Austria-Hungary, Germany had fought and lost a fierce battle in World War I from 1914 to 1918. A war that claimed 16 million casualties. Canadian troops fought alongside troops from Great Britain, France, Russia, Italy, Romania, Japan, and the United States against troops from Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire.
In 1939, Germany started WWII with the invasion of Poland. The war lasted 6 years. It was the deadliest conflict in human history and resulted in over 80 million fatalities.
As a teenager my parents sent me for a year to a private school in South-West England. Every Saturday was movie time. I still remember those nights when war movies were...