A Soldier's View: The Personal Photographs of Canadians at War, 1939–1945

Trevor S. Raymond is a teacher and librarian with the Peel Board of Education and editor of Canadian Holmes.

Since 1999, a project called Testaments of Honour, initiated by
playwright and director Blake Heathcote, has been recording on video, in
association with the federal government, memories of our veterans; an
appendix to this stirring collection of photographs lists about 475
interviewed to date. That so many of them had pictures taken during the
war years is astonishing, given the rarity of (and regulations against)
cameras among servicemen on active duty. Many of the photos that make up
this valuable book were taken during training or on leave overseas, but
a remarkable number were taken in combat situations.

Heathcote collected an amazing 8,700 photos and selected for
publication more than 400 by resorting “to the simple method of taking
ones that elicited the most powerful memories from their owners, thereby
generating insight into how war is experienced first-hand.” They are
superbly reproduced and arranged in nine categories. Each of the three
services is well represented, as are the women’s branches. Pictures
range from the lighthearted to those taken in the heart of darkness at
Bergen-Belsen, from the despair of Dieppe to the airfields of Burma,
from the tranquillity of Vancouver Island to that of a Canadian
graveyard in Ortona. They are from hospital wards and Lancaster cockpits
and icy storms at sea, from the unimaginably horrific Changi Prison and
the smoky cheer of an English pub. None is more haunting that a picture
of sailors from HMCS St. Laurent burying a shipmate “on a cold grey
day in Iceland, thousands of miles from family and home.”

There is little text—sometimes one wishes for a bit more
explanation—but this is not a book to be quickly perused. Contemplate
a few pages at a time. Look carefully at these mostly young faces. How
many never grew older? How many aged in the many veterans’ hospitals
that were built after the war? How many became our parents and
grandparents? Reflect on these remarkable images. Attention must be
paid.