I didn't know my paternal grandfather, but I am getting to know his young self as I scan his WWI diaries from 1917-1918 and his letters home to his parents in Ottawa, Ontario. The leather binding the books is soft and worn and the pages inside are yellow and besmirched with French dirt and splattered with raindrops in the never ending rains of spring, 1917. Grandpa Mulkins gives vent to his youthful frustrations with waiting for his war to begin and then as he and his compatriots are thrust on the sharp end, his disgust for the slaughter seeps through his pen and soaks the pages. His despair is palpable. What was I doing when I was 16? Certainly not that. My father said that his father never discussed the war. One only has to read his journals to understand why he may have avoided rekindling those images of destruction.
