We will remember them: Salmon Arm historian records the stories of more than 100 veterans

By Barb Brouwer

Special to the Observer

Said by millions of people around the world every year, We Will Remember Them is a line from For The Fallen, a poem written in 1914 by Britain’s Robert Laurence Binyon.

The author, who died in 1943, wrote the poem looking out over the sea on the coast of Cornwall, England, and said the now-familiar fourth line of the fourth stanza came to him first:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

But how can we remember them if we don’t know who they are, asks military historian Harry Welton.

It is a question Welton has asked for a long time and it baffles him that some people are only now searching for information when most of the Second World War veterans are no longer alive. He said it is a repeat of what happened following the Great War.

In 2008, Lawrence Williams and Welton interviewed more than 100 veterans, determined to record their stories in order that they will never be forgotten.

One intriguing story surfaced when Salmon Arm resident Larry Calvert asked why his uncle, Jack Calvert, joined the Seaforth Highlanders in Vancouver but was a member of the North Nova Scotia Highlanders when he died in 1944.

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Said by millions of people around the world every year, We Will Remember Them is a line from For The Fallen, a poem written in 1914 by Britain’s Robert Laurence Binyon.

The author, who died in 1943, wrote the poem looking out over the sea on the coast of Cornwall, England, and said the now-familiar fourth line of the fourth stanza came to him first:

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

But how can we remember them if we don’t know who they are, asks military historian Harry Welton.

It is a question Welton has asked for a long time and it baffles him that some people are only now searching for information when most of the Second World War veterans are no longer alive. He said it is a repeat of what happened following the Great War.

In 2008, Lawrence Williams and Welton interviewed more than 100 veterans, determined to record their stories in order that they will never be forgotten.

One intriguing story surfaced when Salmon Arm resident Larry Calvert asked why his uncle, Jack Calvert, joined the Seaforth Highlanders in Vancouver but was a member of the North Nova Scotia Highlanders when he died in 1944.