Second World War veteran and Langford resident John Dumbeck, 102, said everything he wants the younger generations to know is in a poem he wrote in 2020, titled Remembrance Day.
"Well, I always go through this every year," he said, describing what was on his mind when he wrote it. "People nowadays, they don't realize what the war was all about. In fact, they don't even remember war."
In an interview with the Goldstream Gazette, Dumbeck took us back to the Second World War when he was in the Air Force. He joined when he was 18, later reaching the prestigious level of pilot who trained bomber pilots, using Bristol aircraft specifically.
"[The Bristol aircraft] were built pre-war and weren't as fast as the Germans. The Germans shot them down right and left. The British people said, 'Well, that's no good.' They bundled them all up and brought them back to Canada for training purposes, and that's where I fit in."
Spending the war stationed in Canada, Dumbeck said he avoided making friends in the Air Force for one reason.
"You didn't want to be too close because you know they might die the next day," he said.
One of the most painful losses was a friend who he had known since he was 13. Dumbeck said only three months after his friend enlisted, he was killed during the ill-fated Raid on Dieppe.
Joining the Air Force was Dumbeck's decision B次元官网网址� one that was hard on his parents, he noted. But, from age five, Dumbeck had known he wanted to be a pilot. That was when he first saw men training, jumping out of planes with parachutes. Excitedly, he ran back to his house, grabbed his mom's umbrella and jumped off the woodshed. "I ran back in the house and I said, Mom, I broke your umbrella,'" he said with a laugh.
Becoming a pilot, however, was not easy. Dumbeck, 18 at the time, was told by an Air Force officer that he had to start as aircrew and go through tests first. "Stubborn and determined," he told the officer that if he couldn't join as a pilot, he'd leave and return to working on his family farm.
"His eyes brightened as he spoke under his breath, 'Looks like we got a live one here,'" Dumbeck recalled the officer saying. The officer agreed to put him as a pilot in training.
Proudly, Dumbeck made it to Elementary Flying Training School and recalled in his book that this was where he changed from a boy to a man. "No longer a slap-happy farm boy but a man facing the responsibility of being in sole charge of an airplane."
One of Dumbeck's proudest moments was becoming a pilot after years of training. "Boy, oh boy, I felt like B次元官网网址� you know, I never did smoke or drink, but at that moment I felt like I should go and have a beer. I was really happy."
But things weren't all glory in the Air Force, Dumbeck recalled in his written account of that time.
"I lost two close friends and watched others in horrible tragedies. One walked into a spinning prop, another died a lingering death after he dropped a bomb that had been disarmed inadvertently. A few airplanes caught on fire and burned. Talk about war and we had not yet faced the enemy."
"Some of my cohorts began to ask aloud, 'How come you don't get involved in any accidents? You scared or sumpin?' ... Well I tried to tell them it was not all luck ... In fact, I was commended by the Air Force for my record of safety ... I wasn't reckless enough to be a fighter pilot so they decided to keep me home to help train other airmen."
When the war finally ended in 1945, Dumbeck described the feeling in his written account.
"I felt free of the yoke of war and to emphasize my feelings I bought some 'civvy' clothes. A sports jacket, pants, and a nice overcoat, a hamburger and a train ticket to home. What a feeling!
"Now I had to face the prospect of starting my life all over again. My poor Mom was glad to see me and she wanted me to stay home but I was now 24 years old and being war conditioned, the farm life held little incentive for me. With what little money I had saved, I trundled off to Grande Prairie to get a job at the American air base."
Dumbeck went on to become a bush pilot and start a family, but wrote, in another poem, that the noise of war still reverberates in his ears.
Worried that his story would be forgotten and that a global war could happen again, Dumbeck hopes that people will take time to reflect on the words of his poem.
"I think the poem says a lot, but you have to study it," Dumbeck said.