A childhood photo of Margaret Thibault, second from the right, and her siblings John Purves Fraser, Devina Jean Fraser-Rycroft, Donald George Fraser, Elizabeth Anne Fraser-Rogers and Nancy Ellen Fraser-Rycroft, circa 1957.
Margaret Thibault didn't know her dad's secrets until she interviewed him for a college project when she was 20. She quickly realized her thoughts of being hard done by while growing up hardly compared to what he had endured — and tried to shield her from. I never knew the secrets my dad held inside his tough five feet five inches, 145-pound body until I finally interviewed him for a college project when I was 20.
Thibault, right, and her older sisters Betty, left, and Nancy, centre, on the farm ready for the first day of school, circa 1958. We had our own farm-raised beef that I delighted in helping to butcher, getting an up-close look and slippery feel of the different bloody parts of an animal's body. As I interviewed him years later for my project, he said at 72 years old it was time he told somebody in the family a bit about his war years.After four hours of listening, it became clear why he raised his children as he did.Between 1916 and 1921, he had seen military action in the First World War, the Russian Civil War and a skirmish in India — and was a prisoner of war for seven months when he was 20.
He said they ate grain picked from the horses' poops and raw meat from a long-dead horse. I thought of the abundant warm meals we gobbled up three times a day with very little gratitude.
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