I know it all too well

I'm going to show my age here .... I remember being a kid and living with my 80 year old grandfather who was a First World War veteran (note that I'm talking about 'First' ... not the 'Second' ... in case you thought I was mistaken)

We're Indigenous from northern Ontario and he was taken up in the war towards the end of the conflict when they were getting desperate for anyone to join. My grandfather didn't see action in the front lines, he worked in the Canadian forestry corps overseas to build the material needed for the war. He was gone for two whole years ... he didn't speak English (or very little) and he had no clue what the hell he was involved in. But they promised him that he would be paid, that his payments would be sent to his family back home in the wilderness and once he returned, he would be given land to farm, equipment, money to get started, animals and assistance to set it all up.

He got back from the war, got sent up north and told to go home. He arrived home and realized that none of his money had been sent to his family. All his money had gone to pay debts with the Hudson Bay Company. No extras, no land, no animals, nothing else was given. He went back home as poor and with nothing as the day he left ... it was like he had never gone overseas. Towards the last years of his life, he was given a few token awards and celebrated but all of it was far too little, too late.

The interesting part was that when the Second War occurred, First War veterans like my grandfather discouraged younger people from joining, telling them that it wasn't worth it ... they told younger men who wanted to join that they would be sent out, maybe fight and would not get anything for it and would be poor and destitute by the time they got back. We had a bunch of First War veterans in our extended family .... but no Second World War veterans.