15 C , looks like rain may be coming.
Finished up the Co-op yesterday. Sidney won overall and 4 of our teams were 1, 2, 3 and 4. I finished in 3rd with 3 wins and 1 loss. Good day.
I'm heading to Vanderhoof for a few days, so no story until Monday or Tuesday. Today finishes Uncle Roy's story.

EPILOGUE

I

 could end this story on the preceding page but I have chosen not to because firstly it wouldn’t be befitting to someone who was actually a hero and secondly there is an important message that comes from the life and death of my Uncle Roy.

  Obviously Roy Harvey had slipped into a life that had no future and the memories of conflict and death must have been a terrible burden to bear. Alcohol obviously became his savior as well as his enemy. He had fought and bled for his country and the world but in the end there was no one there to fight for him. Some would say he had become a derelict, but was he? Perhaps he was a castoff, he had given all he had to give and then the very entity that had sucked him dry, turned away and left his stale brain and tormented mind to fend alone.

 

  Uncle Roy died May 4, 1966 at the age of forty seven years. He died in King County Hospital in Seattle, Washington; the coroner’s report stated that he died of shock due to 2^nd and 3^rd degree burns over his entire body as a result of falling into a rubbish fire on an empty lot. Interestingly his occupation was given as logger.

  Just another drunk, another rubby? No, no bloody way! And this is why.

  My mother took on the responsibility of attending to the burial and the things that had to be done. Together with my Dad they met with the attending physician and then later an army chaplain.  My parents explained about his military service and when this was corroborated arrangements were made for burial in the Willamette National Cemetery.

  After the brief ceremony the chaplain sat down with my mother saying the usual and expected things but then he went on. “There is one thing you need to know; even though those two wars are long over and in spite of the actual circumstances of your brother’s death he died as a result of war, he is a casualty as sure if he had been brought down by an enemy’s bullet.” He may have said more but these were the words my mother remembered and even cherished.

Roy Stewart Harvey was one of many heroes that suffered the consequences of going to war in the defense of their country and the giving of themselves in ways that most of us cannot even imagine. If he had never been coerced that day in the recruiting office, what would his life have been like? Would he have found a job, married a nice girl, raised a family, lived till he was an old man?  Maybe, maybe not; I guess it doesn’t matter any more, the past is done and unchangeable.

  But perhaps by looking back we can see the way ahead more clearly. 

  John Little