Editor:
Given the emphasis on Remembrance Day in the Nov. 6 edition of The Echo I think it is important to reflect on the experiences of the families of all present day residents of “the hills”. Please allow me to share mine.
My paternal grandfather died prematurely at the age of 71 after a lifetime of lung problems arising from a gas attack in 1917 during the First World War.
He was an 18-year-old German infantryman, the gas was British.
My maternal grandfather, a noncombatant for medical reasons during the Second World War, was shot dead by an allied soldier while opening his front door as the allies occupied his village.
My mother, a girl of 12 in 1939, experienced being strafed by allied fighter planes as she and her mother and other women walked home from their work in the potato fields during the Second World War.
My teenaged aunt and her family fled Berlin in early 1945 for fear of being raped and killed by the advancing Russian army.
Lest we forget.
Walter Sickinger,
Mulmur.