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Nov. 16, 2007
The fighting Smollans
Three brothers fought and died in the war.
JORDAN CHITTLEY
What do you think about during the moment of silence on Remembrance Day? For Bert and Abby Smollan the answer comes easily.
"[I think about] what I think about every day, the loss of my brothers," said Bert.
The same answer comes just as quickly from Abby.
Bert and Abby used to have four brothers and a sister, but that all changed during the Second World War, when three of the siblings died.
Bert was the first of the siblings to join the British Royal Air Force and the rest followed. He wanted to join early, before conscription, so he could choose his branch of armed services. After the medical examination, the results determined that he couldn't be a pilot, so his second choice was to join the medical crew.
"It was a matter of king and country, we're very nationalistic [in Britain]," said Bert. "And, of course, being Jewish, as well, we were also reminded of the atrocity in Europe and thought we should take part in avenging the demise of the Jewish Holocaust."
His first tour in 1940 was not to Europe, but rather to Canada, where pilots from all over the Commonwealth were training in Manitoba.
"When we got on the boat, we asked, where are we going?" said Bert. "Were we going to Europe, Africa? But our big surprise was to arrive in Halifax. Then we travelled by train to Manitoba where we would be stationed.
"I was in charge of the sick bay," chuckled Bert. "But for seven days I was sea sick. I never got out of my bed and I was supposed to look after the sick and weary."
It was in Manitoba in 1943 when he received a letter from his aunt about his first brother's death. Dennis, 21, died at what was supposed to be a relatively safe post in England, in a traffic accident. It was less than a year later, when Bert was back in England, that his brother, Joshua (Jossie), an RAF observer aboard a Hudson bomber, would be heard from for the last time. His plane went missing in January 1944 after a run on Anzio, Italy. None of the crew was found.
And tragedy struck again. Only a few months after Jossie went missing, the youngest sibling, a paratrooper named Harold, was crossing a bridge in Germany – "there was a booby trap bomb set up at the end of the bridge and 21 soldiers died," said Bert. If you think you've heard this story before, it is probably because you have, except, in the Smollan story, no one was send to retrieve the living siblings or force them to retire from the armed forces. One of Bert's and Abby's cousins believes that the movie Saving Private Ryan was based on the Smollan tale.
Bert considers himself to be the luckiest of the bunch, given that he was stationed in Canada, Burma, India and Rangun and the most action he saw was during the air raids in England.
Abby, however, was part of the D-Day crew. "I landed a couple days after D-Day in Normandy, went through the concentration camps and ended on the Danish border," he said. "I was on a big ship and you could see smoke further inland, then I got into a smaller craft and went to the beach, but by the time I arrived, there was no fighting and everything slowed down a bit."
The final sibling, Rita, served in British intelligence. She, along with Abby and their mother, immigrated to Canada and moved to Montreal in 1948. Bert made a move a year earlier, but decided on Vancouver because a family he met in Manitoba was moving there and it sounded appealing because it is "British" Columbia.
For almost 60 years, neither brother wanted to talk about the war. They never even applied for their medals. "My brother and I just felt we didn't want to be reminded of the tragedy, so we put off getting the medals and then these people followed it up because they thought it was deserving that the medals should be presented to us."
Bert and Abby eventually got the war medals and were invited to Ottawa to be presented with them. All 17 medals for the six siblings were presented to the brothers by British High Commissioner David Reddaway at a reception of the Royal Commonwealth Ex-Services League in 2005. "My brother and I felt there should be some recognition of the family war effort," said Bert.
So on this Remembrance Day, when Canadians paused to recognize the contributions of individuals during the war and their sacrifice to ensure liberty and peace, Bert and Abby also had more personal recollections. While Bert is restricted in travelling far by his heart condition, Abby, who is in possession of all the medals except for Bert's, took them out of the cabinet and put them on the dresser. He planned to wear them in downtown Montreal for Remembrance Day. Bert said, "It's all been said, it just has to be remembered."
Jordan Chittley is a Vancouver freelance writer.
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