Two Windsor veterans have the right attitude
When you’ve been in the heat of battle, with bullets ripping through your uniform and anti-tank rockets whizzing around your head, you don’t sweat the small stuff, like being cooped up at home for five weeks because of a global pandemic.
Maybe that’s why Stuart Johns, a 95-yearold East Windsor resident who still lives in his own house, drives his own car and cuts his own grass, isn’t about to join in all this moaning from folks who are oh-so-bored with hunkering down and trying to wait out COVID-19.
Seventy-five years ago today, Johns was a 20-year-old lance corporal and tank commander with the Canadian Grenadier Guards whose coolness under fire played a decisive role in a battle at a blockaded crossroads near the city of Bad Zwischenahn in northwest Germany.
The Walkerville Collegiate graduate’s takecharge efforts in that fierce clash with heavily-armed German paratroopers resulted in him being awarded the coveted DCM (Distinguished Conduct Medal). After the battle, just days prior to Germany’s surrender, three bullet holes were discovered in his uniform, yet he survived unscathed.
Having written about Johns before, including last June when he and D-day veteran Charles Davis travelled to France for the 75th anniversary of the Allied invasion landings in Normandy, I wanted to know how he was getting on, given the sad toll the coronavirus has levied on our area’s seniors.
The answer, in a nutshell, is just fine. Johns and Davis, a feisty 97-year-old also living in his own Windsor home, were scheduled to fly to the Netherlands next week for the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands, the end of the Battle of the Atlantic and VE (Victory in Europe) Day. Those historic events, which were to include visits to manicured Canadian war cemeteries in Holland (more than 7,000 Canadians died to free the Netherlands) and a massive liberation parade, have been postponed because of the tragic global history being made now.
Family members say both men took the news in stride and noted, hopefully, that the ceremonies were postponed, not cancelled. Davis’s daughter, Terri Davis-fitzpatrick, said her dad, whom she described as “sharp as a tack” but independent and headstrong, so much so that he booked a vacation to Cuba on his own last year, didn’t lose any sleep over the news. “He said: ‘I’m fine. Every day above ground is a good day. There’s no point in whining.’ ”
Davis-fitzpatrick is hugely relieved that her dad still lives in his own Riverside home with a family member, far from the carnage among the elderly in Canada’s care homes. “I am so thankful. I would just be flipping out,” she confided.
Thank God for supportive, close-knit families. Nancy Johns-root, a retired teacher and the eldest of Johns’ three daughters, said she and her dad were spending the winter in Hilton Head, S.C. when it became apparent it was time to go home and start self-isolating. Told that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had advised Canadians to return as soon as possible, Johns quipped: “Justin wants us to come home? I didn’t know he knew I was away.”
Johns-root, who lives in a highrise apartment, moved in with her dad for the duration, a mutually beneficial arrangement. They’ve been busy with new soup recipes and yard work that included planting a vegetable garden. They’ve made a trip to the cemetery to visit the grave of Johns’ late wife, Flo, but otherwise they’re doing everything in their power, given his advanced age, to protect him from outside contact.
Johns, who has knee problems and hearing issues but is still mobile, planted his onions this week and sent off his riding mower for servicing. He’s ready and raring for summer, and perplexed by the cabin fever many are experiencing: “How can people be bored?” he asked. “There’s so much to do.”
Last year, he published what he calls a booklet, titled An Innocent at War, chronicling his wartime experiences. Written for family and friends, especially his six adult grandchildren, it’s a concise but fascinating story of a principled young man — he pulled a gun on another Canadian to prevent a German prisoner from being summarily executed — in battles across France, Belgium, Holland and on into Germany.
Stuart Johns and Charles Davis. What great role models. Those gentlemen could write a book about aging well and refusing to capitulate to the ravages of time.