Introduction to the author by his father, Thomas George Marsh Senior
My boy, Thomas was born May 4th, 1915, in the railroad town of Transcona, Manitoba, six months after the First World War had started.
I had been four years in Canada at the time, migrating from England in 1911. I married his mother, Sue Garner, from Kent, England, in April 1914. The Reverend Phillip Barker, a valued friend of the family officiating.
Joining the Canadian Army in 1916, I went overseas with an infantry draft of the 44th Battalion C.E.F., six months later my wife and little boy Tommy followed.
They lived mostly in the south of England – garrison towns, training centers, etc., and later, when I returned wounded, near hospitals and rest camps.
It was here that I believe Tommy got his first liking for things military. He had a mass of golden curly hair, an engaging smile, and – if I do say so myself, a very pretty mother. The Canadian boys made a fuss of the lad. Often he would run to a Canadian soldier as soon as he saw the Maple Leaf badge, crying “Dada!” much to the embarrassment of his mother.
He also learned something about the enemies of his country. At Folkstone, where they stayed, German zeppelins and planes came over on several occasions and bombed the town.
His mother recalls an incident when the dismal sound of the air-raid siren was head, followed by the cries of the wardens, “Take cover, and take cover!”
The people stampeded to comply and an older child who had him in charge deserted little Tommy. Frantically running to catch up with the deserter, as well as his short chubby legs would let him, he fell flat on his face and when picked up, mad as a hatter, forgot his fear of air-raids in his rage at the girl who left him behind.
If he were in the house at the sound of the alarm he would scramble under a cloth that draped the sitting room table to the floor. He would disappear completely. Presently, he would pop his curly head out of a fold in the tablecloth and enquire, “Dem Germans gone yet?”
At night he was often plucked from his bed, wrapped in a blanket and hurried down to the basement, where amid the boom and crash of the anti-aircraft guns he sat huddled on his mother’s lap till the all clear sounded.
These early experiences must have made him both fear and hate. His mother remembers an occasion when she caught him banging his Teddy Bear on the floor, with each bang remarking; “You bad German you!”
Returning to Canada in 1916, he manifested a liking for things military. As a schoolboy he collected brass buttons, badges, shell cases and other souvenirs of war. His pride was a German sniper’s helmet. At the age of fourteen he joined the Winnipeg Sea Cadets. At the time (1929 – the year of the great depression), this organization of loyal business men and youngsters, was so neglected by the powers-that-be that I remember my boy going around very proud of his naval uniform with a big patch in the seat of his pants.
He also had a scrapbook. In it he pasted pictures of interest that he had cut from the daily paper or some magazine. Nearly all these pictures dealt with scenes of war and the military. About this time the Chicago Herald, ran a particularly gruesome supplement dealing with the horrors of the First World War. It showed pictures of naked and mutilated dead men and women in the war zones. I remarked that they should be destroyed as morbid, but he managed to keep them. I think now that it was a premonition of what he would actually see and experience in later years.
Of course he read many other books, his favorite being the old country book “Boys Own Paper” and “Chums”. Those who have read these books know that they are healthy reading, and help to form the best in a boy’s character.
He was a participant, often a leader, in school sports and was a good swimmer and cyclist