IWM

The myth of dying a glorious death at war

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

The letter out of 44 Casualty Clearing Station, British Expeditionary Force, France, is neatly written in vivid blue ink on a creased and wrinkled page of notebook paper, its edges stained deep red in an oddly patriotic, if not disturbing, rendering of time or maybe circumstance.

Written by the chaplain to the forces, Leonard T. Pearson, it’s dated July 10, 1917.

There’s no destination address recorded on the page, but the recipient was William John Paul of Burin, Nfld., a merchant and father of Private Reginald Paul.

Twenty-one-year-old Reginald had been a member of the storied Newfoundland Regiment. He was killed on the first day of battle at the Somme—July 1, 1916. A day venerated by Newfoundlanders.

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Canada’s Nursing Sisters of the First World War

STORY BY SHARON ADAMS

The Hall of Honour in the centre block on Parliament Hill was designed to take your breath away.

The soaring arches and vaulted ceilings draw the eye upward. Soft light from high windows imparts a warm glow to the limestone.

It feels like a space built for a high purpose. It is used for state occasions and formal parliamentary events.

Along the walls are commemorative plaques, reliefs and statues. The largest among them is the Nursing Sisters’ Memorial.

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Hamid Mir, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia

Al-Qaida leader’s Kabul death highlights Taliban’s continuing terrorist ties

STORY BY STEPHEN J. THORNE

At 6:18 a.m. local time on July 31, 2022, a CIA drone launched two Hellfire missiles at the balcony of a house in Kabul’s former diplomatic enclave of Sherpur and killed the man who succeeded Osama bin Laden as al-Qaida leader.

In one fell swoop, the death of Ayman al-Zawahiri, 71, one of the world’s most wanted terrorists, erased any pretense that Afghanistan’s new Taliban regime was somehow better, more credible or deserving of legitimacy than the old one.

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Allies fight the weather, terrain and the Japanese in a battle for Pacific islands

STORY BY SHARON ADAMS

Many today may not realize it or remember, but North America was invaded during the Second World War.

Six months after the attack on the U.S. fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, the Japanese set up shop in Alaska’s Aleutian Islands, which stretch like a long tail from the state’s coast 1,800 kilometres southwest into the Pacific Ocean.

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• Constructive dismissal

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