I barely knew my grandfather, William “Scotty” Beck. He died when I was six of lung cancer after a lifetime of working in the mine in Wawa, Ontario. Of the things I remember, I remember him being a veteran of WWII. He, I believe, fought in the wave of tanks that hit the beaches after D-Day. I’ve been told he rarely spoke of the war and had, at times, awoke in the middle of the night under the belief that he was back in Europe and under attack. Which, given that he was the father of four daughters, terrified pretty much everyone under the roof.

The one story he did tell was of the time a German surrendered to him. The story goes that when the crews that manned the tanks needed to rest, they would park and vacate as far away from the vehicles as possible in case they came under attack.

One morning, my grandfather awoke to the surprise of a German soldier sleeping quietly next to him, arms crossed, out cold. His initial response, being newly awake and trained to kill, was to attack his enemy. The German backed away and begged for mercy and it quickly became clear that the soldier was attempting to surrender and had went awol from the Nazi army days prior. In his mind, the most universal way to show that you meant peace was to lie beside someone and go to sleep trusting them not to kill you.

No one in my family, as far as I know, has ever written a novel. I’d like to imagine that, if given more time, Scotty would have written his account of being a young man freshly emigrated to Canada from Scotland - only to return to Europe to save his homeland - and his experiences in WWII.