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8- The Oakville Beaver Weekend, Saturday November 10, 2007 www.oakvillebeaver.com Didn't know what they were up against Continued from page 3 "All my chums were joining. My best school chum joined the navy." And that was that. Paul doesn't go into much detail about his service overseas. When they were in danger, he says, "You'd get out of the tank and you'd run like hell." It's Clara who mentioned he landed at Juno Beach on D-Day ­ June 6, 1994. That's the day the allied forces crossed the sea from England to Normandy, weakening Germany's hold on western Europe. "As they came off the boat, they ran into fire ­ the Germans were firing at them," Clara said. Paul recalls it being "noisy" and "confusing." "We were all set and loaded up with ammunition and gas. I remember going in, but you don't remember too much of what's going on. You're too damn busy trying to keep alive." Paul says he can't really describe how he felt when the Germans announced surrender in the spring of 1945. "I felt relieved. You've never been in action. You wouldn't know," he said, smiling. "When you get out of action, it's like a load off your chest." But the worst part of his war experience was still to come. "What hurt the most is you're at home, you're walking down the main street, and you run into Mrs. Evans, and you say, How is Jim doing? And she says, `We lost him two years ago. He was lost in the ocean, the ship went down.' "That was my best school chum," said Paul. "There were a lot like that who just didn't come back. "It hurts. It's like you're sinking right through the ground. "You don't know what's going on, you don't know what to say half the time." And yet, Paul enlisted to fight in Korea. "I had to go back a second time," he explained. "All my chums were going in." "They were sitting in the Legion, they were drinking, and one of them said, `Let's go to Korea,'" said Clara, smiling. And that was that. "It was all the same," Paul said. "You get shot at, you get shot at all the same. It's all the sacrifices, and it hurts." And `Slim,' once again, was manning the tanks. Clara knew very little of Paul's service until long after they met. "I met him after Korea, and he never even mentioned the wars," she said. "You never do talk about it," Paul said, adding "it's about time" he did. Tomorrow, Paul will participate in a Remembrance Day ceremony at Post Inn, clad in his legion uni- "We weren't actually hit by bombs, but they came very close, a matter of feet in one case. Your hair goes white overnight sometimes. That's how bad it was." Merner Ritz, war veteran form, decorated with medals earned in both Korea and the Second World War. "There's a lot that goes through your head," he said. "We think about the boys that fought and didn't come back, like my good school chum, Jack Evans." Merner Ritz His job was to make the army's job easier. The photographs were developed, cut, glued together and laid out on a giant table ­ a map of what the troops should expect as they advanced. They were never safe while developing pictures in those temporary camps, Merner Ritz ­ better known as Mern ­ recalls. "We worked around the clock, about 25 of us," said the 83-yearold. "You were in danger all the time, because the airfield the RAF had carved out was usually in the woods. They were always bombing the airfields. "We weren't actually hit by bombs, but they came very close," Ritz continued, "a matter of feet in one case. "Your hair goes white overnight sometimes. That's how bad it was." He never recalls being scared, though. "I didn't know what I was up against," he said. "Had I know what I know now, I would have been scared." A native of Kitchener, Ontario, Ritz enlisted at age 18 with the Royal Canadian Air Force on April 1, 1943 ­ he remembers the date exactly. That's just one war-time detail firmly implanted in his memory. He even remembers the name of a family ­ the Rooymans ­ who put him up at their home in Holland for a few days in December of 1944. "That goes back 60 years, I remember all these things," he said, smiling. "I'm trying to fill it in without making mistakes, but generally, this sticks with you for the rest of your life." A photographer by hobby when he enlisted, Ritz turned that into a job with the Air Force. He began training in Toronto, then Aylmer, Trenton and finally Ottawa. "In Canada, I took aerial photo- LIESA KORTMANN / OAKVILLE BEAVER PRISONER OF WAR: Jim Prescott, 93, was among hundreds of British soldiers taken as prisoners of war after the British Army surrendered to the Japanese forces in February, 1942. graphs, but they were strictly for training purposes," he explained. Ritz went overseas to England in December of 1943 and began working with the Royal Air Force. By that time, war photography had changed. "They built a special aircraft for photography only," he said. "The Bluebird Spitfire. The Spitfire had guns, but the Bluebird Spitfire had no guns, just five cameras." There was one in each wing of the plane, one in the nose, one in the centre and one on the tail. "You'd push a button and all the cameras went off at the same time," he said. Ritz didn't man that plane ­ a pilot did ­ but he and a team were waiting to develop those prints and assemble them into a map. "That was done every day. The army picked up the pictures in the morning and used it as a map. They could tell by that map where they were best suited to advance their army," he said. "They had seen in the pictures where the hills were, and they could judge the size of buildings based on shadows." The airfield camps were temporary, often in fields, and moved as the army advanced. "We slept on the ground most of the time, made our beds out of pine branches, and we had a waterproof groundsheet on top," said Ritz. For pillows, they used the bags they carried their clothes in. He recalls in Holland they were lucky enough to find an indoor camp ­ an old, abandoned school building. "You had a lot of people sleeping in the rooms," he said. "I picked the landing to sleep on. We all picked our own corners, wherever we felt was going to be livable for us." When they weren't sleeping, they were loading cameras, developing pictures and creating maps based on those pictures. He had hundreds of these photos not long ago, but Ritz threw many of them out when he moved to Post Inn Village, where his wife of 59 years, Cecilia, also lives. Their daughter has asked her father to recount his entire war story ­ start to finish. "That's not my style," he said. "I don't like to talk about it too much, unless you ask a specific question. I had a rough time." Part of that is because during the war, Ritz was thrown off the back of a truck, and has had debilitating back pain ever since. Despite the many painful memories, he recognizes the importance of telling his story ­ especially while his memory is as sharp as it is. "People should know, if we had not won the war, things would be very different," said Ritz. "It's hard to explain, though. Until you're there and you experience it, see if for yourself, you can't imagine what it's like. It's impossible." **** Tomorrow, we remember brave soldiers like Jim Prescott, Joe Paul and Merner Ritz. We remember the many Canadians who fought and died for freedom, and the soldiers who recently lost their lives fighting for democracy a world away. More than 110,000 Canadians died in the First World War, the Second World War and the Korean War. Lest we forget.