- Reaction score
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- Points
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I remember thinking to myself that the Black Watch (RHR) of Canada probably weren't at Tobruk ... and that it was interesting he enlisted in Toronto but ended up in the Watch ...
(however I simply "wrote it off", thinking perhaps he was on exchange with the Brits)
This debate rages on ...
Sense of outrage
By Bruce Williams (The Globe and Mail), Tuesday, Jul 6, 2004
Regina -- The Forgotten Soldier was a fascinating article unfortunately marred by inaccuracies. Alfred Finley claims to have fought in the battles of Tobruk, Anzio and D-Day.
There were a series of battles fought around Tobruk between January, 1941, and November, 1942. However, Canadian troops were not involved.
The battle of Anzio raged from January to late May, 1944. Canadian troops did not participate in this operation and the time frame makes it unlikely that Mr. Finley could have returned to England in time to land in Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada, with which Mr. Finley claims to have been serving, did not take part in any of these battles. Its website states, "The regiment first saw action at Dieppe, where its C Company and mortar platoon were an essential element of the raid. Landing in Normandy shortly after D-Day, the Black Watch participated in some 30 battle actions throughout France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany."
While Mr. Finley may be a veteran and the topic of a legitimate human-interest story, the article is tainted by these inaccuracies.
++++++
Sense of outrage
By Kimberley Blackburn (The Globe and Mail, Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - Page A16)
St. Catharines, Ont. -- I'm not sure where to even begin to voice my outrage (The Forgotten Soldier -- July 3). I am appalled to think about a Second World War veteran living in a garage without plumbing, paying $600 a month for that privilege, and not being given the decency of privacy.
To add to that insult, his landlady sees nothing wrong with the arrangement and suggests he is like a father to her. It grieves me to think of anyone living in these conditions.
We must never forget that we are judged as a society by how we treat the less fortunate. It would be my hope that we take this example of one man's life and vow to do more.
And I would like to see city officials explain to the landlady what a rental unit must consist of.
+++++
The forgotten soldier
Alfred Finley survived some of the great battles of the Second World War. Now he lives in a garage with no running water. At least, PETER CHENEY reports, his landlord cleans his chamber pot
By Peter Cheney (The Globe and Mail, Saturday, Jul 3, 2004)
Behind a steel garage door in the Junction Triangle, an old soldier is living much as he did more than 60 years ago, when he was a baby-faced recruit sleeping in a horse stall at a makeshift barracks in downtown Toronto.
Now Alfred Finley is 84, a survivor in every sense of the word, having lived through many of the Second World War's greatest battles. He was on the beach at D-Day and he fought at Anzio and Tobruk. Countless friends were killed and wounded, but Mr. Finley managed to get through four years of war without so much as a scratch.
"I was lucky," he says. "It could have gone the other way just as easy."
For Mr. Finley, peacetime has not been so kind. He lives in the vestibule of a garage in a back alley next to Toronto's old slaughterhouse district.
His room is less than 100 square feet, and there is no running water. He cleans himself with a sponge and a basin. His toilet is a ceramic bucket.
Mr. Finley has lived in the garage for 13 years. He pays $600 a month rent. He sleeps on a small daybed, which he carefully makes each morning, just as he was taught in the military.
He has a radio, a few cheap trinkets and a small closet, where he keeps his old uniform. Most would be aghast at his circumstances, but Mr. Finley sees the glass as half full, not half empty.
"This is a good place," he says. "I've got my freedom."
Mr. Finley's landlord is Maryann Schenbri, a former factory worker. She met Mr. Finley through her ex-husband, who rented him a room in a boarding house.
She sees nothing wrong with Mr. Finley's living arrangements, despite the lack of plumbing and the fact that he has no privacy, since she walks through his room to get to her car.
"Please," she says. "He's like my father."
Ms. Schenbri has never asked Mr. Finley about his military history. "Why would I want to know about that?" she says. "It was before I was born."
Mr. Finley belonged to one of the military's most storied outfits -- the Black Watch Regiment, which was famous for its kilts, its spectacular pipe-and-drum band and its ferocity in battle -- a quality that led German soldiers in the Second World War to dub the unit "The Ladies from Hell."
Mr. Finley's military career was the product of circumstance.
He was born in 1919, on Christmas Day.
His father was a labourer who had fought with the Canadian Army in the First World War. Mr. Finley was an only child, conceived after his father returned from battle.
Like the rest of his generation, Mr. Finley watched the rise of the Nazis with growing alarm: "Let's just say I didn't like the way Hitler was doing things," he says. "I figured I should pitch in."
Mr. Finley enlisted in the army in January, 1940, at Exhibition Place, which was lined with barracks, all of them packed with young recruits. Mr. Finley slept in a horse stall that had been fitted with bunks. He was issued a uniform made at Tip Top Tailors on the lakefront. After a week of basic training, he was shipped to Ottawa, then to Halifax, where he was loaded onto a troop ship to England.
After more training, he was sent to battle. He remembers the North Africa campaign, where he slept in a foxhole dug into the sand.
"It was a hundred degrees in the day, and then at night you wanted 12 blankets, but you didn't have them," he recalls. "But it was all right. You got through."
His most vivid memory is D-Day. He was loaded onto a troop carrier in the predawn of June 6, 1944. In the waters off Juno Beach in Normandy, he climbed down a net into a landing craft. He huddled with his fellow soldiers, trying to keep his head down -- massive shells from the German shore batteries ripped through the air overhead, and the sky was "black with airplanes."
When the steel unloading ramp dropped, Mr. Finley ran forward and into the water. All around him, soldiers were falling. He found himself stepping over the dead who had sunk under the weight of their equipment. He doesn't know how many of his friends died that day, except that it was a lot.
"You didn't stop and count," he says. "You kept going forward."
When the war ended, he returned to Canada as a sergeant. He was released from the army in Toronto and got a job as a hospital orderly. He later worked his way up to male nurse, and worked in several hospitals. In the sixties, he came down with an infection after a minor cut became inflamed. It turned into gangrene and he lost his leg.
Since then, Mr. Finley has lived an austere existence, moving from one rented space to another. Today, his monthly income is about $900, including his military pension and old-age pension. After paying for food and rent, there's virtually nothing left.
Mr. Finley's only luxury is cigarettes -- DuMaurier's, which he smokes after tearing off the filters. His most valuable possession is an electric wheelchair, which he has equipped with two batteries for extra range. He rises early each morning and heads down to Bloor Street. He buys a coffee at McDonald's, then cruises on his wheelchair through High Park. He occasionally goes for lunch at Swiss Chalet, where he orders a glass of water with his meal. "Your money doesn't go far."
Mr. Finley doesn't drink. "In the army, there weren't too many of us who didn't, but I wouldn't give you two cents for a whole carload of it."
He never married. "I never found the right one," he says. "I was particular. Maybe I was too particular."
Mr. Finley's tiny room has the feel of a barracks. The furniture consists of his daybed, a single dresser and a TV table. On the wall are two framed posters of kittens. In his closet is his Black Watch uniform, with a row of campaign ribbons pinned to the chest. Mr. Finley puts it on every November, when he goes to the Remembrance Day ceremonies at Old City Hall.
He speaks of his military contribution in understated style: "It helped. I did my part, just like everybody else did. We freed a lot of people."
Living in Ms. Schenbri's garage doesn't strike Mr. Finley as anything out of the ordinary. Nor does he think the $600 he pays her is excessive. "I have no problem with it," he says, noting that Ms. Schenbri cleans his chamber pot and sometimes cooks the food he buys.
Mr. Finley's biggest obstacle is snow, which prevents him from getting out on his wheelchair. He once spent five weeks trapped in the garage during a long storm. He passed the time by recording music off the radio. "It was fine," he says. "What's the use in getting bored?"
He says he once applied to live in subsidized housing, but gave up after being put on a long waiting list. And he says he doesn't want to go to a veterans hospital.
"What would I do?" he says. "They're too far out of the way. I couldn't go anywhere."
Mr. Finley's remaining ambition is love: "I'd like to meet a lady who had some money," he says. "That would be nice. But I don't know if it's going to happen."
(however I simply "wrote it off", thinking perhaps he was on exchange with the Brits)
This debate rages on ...
Sense of outrage
By Bruce Williams (The Globe and Mail), Tuesday, Jul 6, 2004
Regina -- The Forgotten Soldier was a fascinating article unfortunately marred by inaccuracies. Alfred Finley claims to have fought in the battles of Tobruk, Anzio and D-Day.
There were a series of battles fought around Tobruk between January, 1941, and November, 1942. However, Canadian troops were not involved.
The battle of Anzio raged from January to late May, 1944. Canadian troops did not participate in this operation and the time frame makes it unlikely that Mr. Finley could have returned to England in time to land in Normandy on D-Day, June 6, 1944.
The Black Watch (Royal Highland Regiment) of Canada, with which Mr. Finley claims to have been serving, did not take part in any of these battles. Its website states, "The regiment first saw action at Dieppe, where its C Company and mortar platoon were an essential element of the raid. Landing in Normandy shortly after D-Day, the Black Watch participated in some 30 battle actions throughout France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany."
While Mr. Finley may be a veteran and the topic of a legitimate human-interest story, the article is tainted by these inaccuracies.
++++++
Sense of outrage
By Kimberley Blackburn (The Globe and Mail, Tuesday, July 6, 2004 - Page A16)
St. Catharines, Ont. -- I'm not sure where to even begin to voice my outrage (The Forgotten Soldier -- July 3). I am appalled to think about a Second World War veteran living in a garage without plumbing, paying $600 a month for that privilege, and not being given the decency of privacy.
To add to that insult, his landlady sees nothing wrong with the arrangement and suggests he is like a father to her. It grieves me to think of anyone living in these conditions.
We must never forget that we are judged as a society by how we treat the less fortunate. It would be my hope that we take this example of one man's life and vow to do more.
And I would like to see city officials explain to the landlady what a rental unit must consist of.
+++++
The forgotten soldier
Alfred Finley survived some of the great battles of the Second World War. Now he lives in a garage with no running water. At least, PETER CHENEY reports, his landlord cleans his chamber pot
By Peter Cheney (The Globe and Mail, Saturday, Jul 3, 2004)
Behind a steel garage door in the Junction Triangle, an old soldier is living much as he did more than 60 years ago, when he was a baby-faced recruit sleeping in a horse stall at a makeshift barracks in downtown Toronto.
Now Alfred Finley is 84, a survivor in every sense of the word, having lived through many of the Second World War's greatest battles. He was on the beach at D-Day and he fought at Anzio and Tobruk. Countless friends were killed and wounded, but Mr. Finley managed to get through four years of war without so much as a scratch.
"I was lucky," he says. "It could have gone the other way just as easy."
For Mr. Finley, peacetime has not been so kind. He lives in the vestibule of a garage in a back alley next to Toronto's old slaughterhouse district.
His room is less than 100 square feet, and there is no running water. He cleans himself with a sponge and a basin. His toilet is a ceramic bucket.
Mr. Finley has lived in the garage for 13 years. He pays $600 a month rent. He sleeps on a small daybed, which he carefully makes each morning, just as he was taught in the military.
He has a radio, a few cheap trinkets and a small closet, where he keeps his old uniform. Most would be aghast at his circumstances, but Mr. Finley sees the glass as half full, not half empty.
"This is a good place," he says. "I've got my freedom."
Mr. Finley's landlord is Maryann Schenbri, a former factory worker. She met Mr. Finley through her ex-husband, who rented him a room in a boarding house.
She sees nothing wrong with Mr. Finley's living arrangements, despite the lack of plumbing and the fact that he has no privacy, since she walks through his room to get to her car.
"Please," she says. "He's like my father."
Ms. Schenbri has never asked Mr. Finley about his military history. "Why would I want to know about that?" she says. "It was before I was born."
Mr. Finley belonged to one of the military's most storied outfits -- the Black Watch Regiment, which was famous for its kilts, its spectacular pipe-and-drum band and its ferocity in battle -- a quality that led German soldiers in the Second World War to dub the unit "The Ladies from Hell."
Mr. Finley's military career was the product of circumstance.
He was born in 1919, on Christmas Day.
His father was a labourer who had fought with the Canadian Army in the First World War. Mr. Finley was an only child, conceived after his father returned from battle.
Like the rest of his generation, Mr. Finley watched the rise of the Nazis with growing alarm: "Let's just say I didn't like the way Hitler was doing things," he says. "I figured I should pitch in."
Mr. Finley enlisted in the army in January, 1940, at Exhibition Place, which was lined with barracks, all of them packed with young recruits. Mr. Finley slept in a horse stall that had been fitted with bunks. He was issued a uniform made at Tip Top Tailors on the lakefront. After a week of basic training, he was shipped to Ottawa, then to Halifax, where he was loaded onto a troop ship to England.
After more training, he was sent to battle. He remembers the North Africa campaign, where he slept in a foxhole dug into the sand.
"It was a hundred degrees in the day, and then at night you wanted 12 blankets, but you didn't have them," he recalls. "But it was all right. You got through."
His most vivid memory is D-Day. He was loaded onto a troop carrier in the predawn of June 6, 1944. In the waters off Juno Beach in Normandy, he climbed down a net into a landing craft. He huddled with his fellow soldiers, trying to keep his head down -- massive shells from the German shore batteries ripped through the air overhead, and the sky was "black with airplanes."
When the steel unloading ramp dropped, Mr. Finley ran forward and into the water. All around him, soldiers were falling. He found himself stepping over the dead who had sunk under the weight of their equipment. He doesn't know how many of his friends died that day, except that it was a lot.
"You didn't stop and count," he says. "You kept going forward."
When the war ended, he returned to Canada as a sergeant. He was released from the army in Toronto and got a job as a hospital orderly. He later worked his way up to male nurse, and worked in several hospitals. In the sixties, he came down with an infection after a minor cut became inflamed. It turned into gangrene and he lost his leg.
Since then, Mr. Finley has lived an austere existence, moving from one rented space to another. Today, his monthly income is about $900, including his military pension and old-age pension. After paying for food and rent, there's virtually nothing left.
Mr. Finley's only luxury is cigarettes -- DuMaurier's, which he smokes after tearing off the filters. His most valuable possession is an electric wheelchair, which he has equipped with two batteries for extra range. He rises early each morning and heads down to Bloor Street. He buys a coffee at McDonald's, then cruises on his wheelchair through High Park. He occasionally goes for lunch at Swiss Chalet, where he orders a glass of water with his meal. "Your money doesn't go far."
Mr. Finley doesn't drink. "In the army, there weren't too many of us who didn't, but I wouldn't give you two cents for a whole carload of it."
He never married. "I never found the right one," he says. "I was particular. Maybe I was too particular."
Mr. Finley's tiny room has the feel of a barracks. The furniture consists of his daybed, a single dresser and a TV table. On the wall are two framed posters of kittens. In his closet is his Black Watch uniform, with a row of campaign ribbons pinned to the chest. Mr. Finley puts it on every November, when he goes to the Remembrance Day ceremonies at Old City Hall.
He speaks of his military contribution in understated style: "It helped. I did my part, just like everybody else did. We freed a lot of people."
Living in Ms. Schenbri's garage doesn't strike Mr. Finley as anything out of the ordinary. Nor does he think the $600 he pays her is excessive. "I have no problem with it," he says, noting that Ms. Schenbri cleans his chamber pot and sometimes cooks the food he buys.
Mr. Finley's biggest obstacle is snow, which prevents him from getting out on his wheelchair. He once spent five weeks trapped in the garage during a long storm. He passed the time by recording music off the radio. "It was fine," he says. "What's the use in getting bored?"
He says he once applied to live in subsidized housing, but gave up after being put on a long waiting list. And he says he doesn't want to go to a veterans hospital.
"What would I do?" he says. "They're too far out of the way. I couldn't go anywhere."
Mr. Finley's remaining ambition is love: "I'd like to meet a lady who had some money," he says. "That would be nice. But I don't know if it's going to happen."
