Chapter 57

21 December, 1918

High up on the hill, I looked past the Place d’Armes watchtower at the ship docked under the harbor lights, which would transport us across the English Channel to Dover the next morning. After traveling eleven hundred miles, the train that had delivered us from Ingolstadt in five days rested in the nearby Gare de Calais.

I would momentarily rejoin Howie and the Vicar in the dockside estaminet, which was teaming with soldiers returning from the front, all charged with excitement. As I desired a little time in the fresh wintry air to think, I strode up the long pathway that ended at the lookout.

On this first day of winter, peace was on everyone’s mind, yet my thoughts summoned the inevitable spring that would bring flowers, green grass, darling foals, warm air, and all the other new growth that refreshes our earth. For me this was a renewal by basking in daydreams while shedding nightmares.

The world was free; even those who had sought to bring evil were free of their horrific burden. It was true the British way of life had broken down, that England, France, Germany and others were nearly bankrupt. But choices would open up in a restoration after everything settled down to become normal in a new way. As mankind’s effort to build destructive war machinery transformed to building homes and workplaces and factories for the benefit of all, our world citizens would adapt to renewed lives. Even the losses would heal with time.

I struck a match to light my pipe as I leaned back against a man-sized rock, peering up at the waning moon that was full enough to brighten the night. The shadow of the wispy clouds passing across its surface reminded me of the many nights traveling high above in the open air. I was thankful for that moonlit image that would always be etched in my mind as a reminder of the people who had taught me how to face fear and embrace courage—Perce, Cissy, Wellsey, Hardy, and so many others.

The faint voice of the Vicar calling from below reminded me that he and Howie were also key influences in the shaping of my future. Oh yes, I would go back to Saskatoon to weigh my choices, knowing the university held open my seat at the law school. Yet I also knew I had a tidy sum of war-allowance savings tucked away at the Bank of Montreal, which would give me the freedom to travel, maybe to Vancouver to see my sister Ethel. Perhaps Hilda would go too. There would be choices that for the past few years I had not permitted myself to consider.

As I now pondered those options, the moon silhouetted a distant aeroplane passing through its brilliance as if proving for me the point about its image of courage. The distant hum of its engine propelling it through the night sky and its flickering wing lights had been transformed from images of war to one of peaceful passage. Perhaps Cissy was directing it as a signal of love—daydreams could happen at night too.

“Bobby, you out here?”

I had better go and begin living again.