Herbert Austin Smith was one of my maternal grandfather's older brothers; the fourth child, third son, of my great-grandparents, George Robert Smith and Isabella Frances Parker. During his childhood, Herb contracted Scarlet fever. With a houseful of children and her husband's business associates as frequent guests, my great-grandmother had to find a way to keep Herb busy while he recuperated and so she taught him to knit, an unusual skill for a boy, but it would come in very handy soon enough.
On April 8, 1915, Herb, then nineteen, enlisted in the Canadian Over-seas Expeditionary Force, he embarked for France with the 5th Canadian Mounted Rifles on October 24, 1915, and was taken prisoner at Ypres in August of 1916. He spent the duration of the war, two years and almost three months, in a German Prisoner of War camp.
Most of the details of Uncle Herb's time as a POW are unknown to me and he has no living descendants, but there is one story that survives.
When he was captured, Herb was wearing a hand-knit sweater under his uniform. During the monotony of his imprisonment, Herb must have remembered how he had passed the time during his childhood convalescence and so he fashioned knitting needles out of sticks, unraveled his sweater and then he knit it all over again. And he did this over and over and over for all those months until he was finally freed on the day of the armistice.
Herb's life changed in the blink of an eye when he was injured, captured and transported to a prison camp in Germany and then he faced many months of stress, worry and uncertainly, cut off from his family, friends, and country. Sound familiar? But even without books, phones, the internet, a Playstation or even a board game, Herb found a way to keep himself and his mind occupied.
As I face this new reality with all of its attendant uncertainty, stress and worry, I will look to my Grand-uncle Herb as an excellent example of making the most of what you have to make it through to better times.
When he was captured, Herb was wearing a hand-knit sweater under his uniform. During the monotony of his imprisonment, Herb must have remembered how he had passed the time during his childhood convalescence and so he fashioned knitting needles out of sticks, unraveled his sweater and then he knit it all over again. And he did this over and over and over for all those months until he was finally freed on the day of the armistice.
Herb's life changed in the blink of an eye when he was injured, captured and transported to a prison camp in Germany and then he faced many months of stress, worry and uncertainly, cut off from his family, friends, and country. Sound familiar? But even without books, phones, the internet, a Playstation or even a board game, Herb found a way to keep himself and his mind occupied.
As I face this new reality with all of its attendant uncertainty, stress and worry, I will look to my Grand-uncle Herb as an excellent example of making the most of what you have to make it through to better times.
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