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“These things stick with you.” I hear this said regularly. Wet uniforms, slit trenches, back-to-back sorties, hammocks, civilian casualties, facing the enemy, losing comrades. These things stick with you.

I joined The Memory Project: Stories of the Second World War as a Research and Collections Officer in July of this year, just as the project was getting off the ground. My job is to find Second World War veterans, and record their stories about their time in the services. Everyone on our team knew, even before we had spoken with our first veteran, that completing this project was going to be an intense, inspiring and deeply moving experience. I don’t think I understood, however, just how important this work would be.

Three months into the project, I have interviewed close to fifty veterans in three provinces. Their stories cover almost every theatre of the war, with many veterans recounting their experiences within the same battle. Yet no two narratives are the same: Col. (Ret.) Bernard Finestone from Montreal recounts his armoured unit’s role in the brutal battles throughout Italy, including Ortona and Monte Casino – and about the constant stress involved with ground battle; Private Helen Jean Crawley talks about the girls she worked with on the searchlights and about learning to ride a motorcycle as a dispatch rider in England; Pilot Officer Malcolm Andrade, originally from British Guyana, now in Toronto, recalls an operation with his Tactical Flying unit, #127 Squadron, to attack a German SS column on the ground and the one German dispatch officer who tried to get away; Corporal John Franken, an air mechanic trainee with the Dutch Naval Airforce is haunted by the cruelty he witnessed and endured during his three and a half years as a Prisoner of War in the Japanese camps, and about the number of times his life was spared by fate, chance or plain old luck.

The stories are amazing, almost unbelievable- the things ordinary people were made to endure. What moves me the most, though, is the generosity and courage the veterans show in sharing these memories. It becomes obviously difficult for many to relive some of their darker moments, but they do it. They take us there, back into the cockpits and trenches, the engine rooms and mess halls. I feel honoured to be on the other end of the phone or sitting across the table - to be the one with whom they share their stories. Often, their own families are unaware of these stories. Many times a veteran will say he or she feels honoured that I’m even asking. To me, that’s the real value of The Memory Project: we’re asking. Each veteran holds a piece of the puzzle, each story is important when trying to understand the impact war can have. We’re asking. We want to know.

It’s extremely easy to romanticize this period of history and the battles fought and won, but that seems of little value to the vets I’ve spoken to. They are unsentimental in their telling, and pull no punches about the good times the war provided, as well as the difficulties, challenges and horrors they experienced, and in some cases, continue to experience. They just want people to know what happened, and to remember the people that died.

I have learned more in these three months, than from all the history classes I’ve ever taken, combined. I’m learning about the sheer geographic scope of the war, which I didn’t understand; about the strategies utilized and politics involved. I’m also learning a lot about Canada and about what it means to be Canadian. The people we are interviewing for this archive – now in their 80’s and 90’s - have an entirely unique perspective on just about everything. They are the last generation, en masse, who understand what it means to protect something, to lose and to win. They know what it means to sacrifice and they know about the real costs of war. These things are sticking with me.