Dear Editor,

Our Dad was a veteran of World War Two, though he never talked about it. Us kids knew only that he was a good man and a firm believer in duty and responsibility. To him, it did not matter if you did not want to do something. If it was the right thing to do, you did it and accepted the cost. He was a man who had the courage of his convictions, and we greatly admired him for it.

A year or two before he passed away in 1998, he and I did a tour of the War Museum in Ottawa. Strolling through the exhibits, we came across a model of a warship, a corvette. My Dad immediately went over to it and studied it carefully. After some time, he said, “Do you see that wire there?” and pointed it out. “When we hit that mine, I would have been blown overboard with the others, but my hand somehow touched it, I hung on and I lived. “

To put it politely, I was gobsmacked. Our Dad had never spoken of his war service before and, while we knew he had been in the navy and on corvettes, we knew little else, and we certainly had no idea he had been blown up like that. Some years later, after he passed away, I began to research his service and after a long period of tracking down and confirming the facts, I eventually found out some of what he had never mentioned to us.

On D Day in 1944, when the allies invaded Nazi occupied Europe, Hugh was a junior officer on a corvette just off the shore of Normandy. Because corvettes are very small, they were able to get right in close to the shore, 300 to 400 metres or even closer. It also meant the enemy could clearly see you. On that day, my dad and his ship were firing at almost point-blank range, directly in support of the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division as they stormed ashore at Juno Beach. It was about three weeks later, in about the same place, when his corvette hit a floating mine which tore off the front of his ship, killing 28 and injuring many others, Hugh among them. He was 21 years old. I am still amazed.

Courage does not mean you are not afraid, maybe even terrified. Courage means you go anyway.

On the 6th of June 1944, Hugh Affleck went anyway.

On the 6th of June 2024, please remember our dad and the over 14,000 other young Canadians who, on that day, went into danger anyway so that we could live free.

Respectfully,

Colin Affleck