They came to the table one by one. First came Roman Sarauer, then Edgar Powell, then Leon Demers. They are three of the last Second World War veterans in the area. Last came Marion Muller, who fell in love and married a Canadian soldier named Hjalmar Muller when he helped liberate her hometown in Holland.
In the spring of 1945, Canadian troops poured into Holland, ending five years of brutal German occupation and freeing the grateful Dutch people. Among the thousands of Canadians in Holland that spring were Roman, Edgar and Leon. They didn't know each other at the time, but through the twists and turns of fate, they do now.
Sixty-eight years after that spring, they sat around a table at Caleb Village, a retirement home in Humboldt where they all live, and remembered those momentous days. There was a lot of pain and plenty of tears, but there was also an amazing love story.
"One day I was walking down the road with a friend and he started following us in his Jeep," Marion said of her husband Hjalmar, who died in 1999. "He tried to talk to us but we didn't say anything because he was a stranger. The next day he came by my house and asked my mother if he could talk to me."
The man who helped free Marion's village soon left to go back to Canada, but not before falling madly in love with the Dutch girl he'd followed in his Jeep. Marion came to Canada the next year and joined her new husband on a farm in LeRoy. It was a bit of a culture shock for a girl who had grown up on the outskirts of centuries-old Amsterdam.
"My first thought was, 'I wish I hadn't come,'" Marion said with a laugh. She stayed, of course, and made friends with Judith Helgeson, her next-door neighbour. Decades later, Judith was sitting next to her at that table at Caleb Village, still a best friend.
Of course, stories of loss and despair outnumbered those of love and joy. In his deep, gravelly voice, Edgar remembered Dutch civilians picking dandelions to eat as food supplies dwindled. Gas was hard to come by so everyone rode bicycles, he said. He spoke a little bit about how differently mental issues like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) are treated now.
"Back then you were just supposed to get on with your life," he said. "Depression and that sort of thing, you just had to deal with it yourself."
The situation in Holland became so desperate that Canadian soldiers were often sent a precious commodity in the mail.
"Cigarettes were like gold," Roman said. "You could sell them for 35 cents a cigarette, which was a lot of money back then."
Of all the veterans, Leon, 89, had the most to say. He alternated between fond remembrances and memories that still haunt him. After the war in Europe ended in May 1945, Leon spent seven months in Germany as part of the occupation force. It was there that he recognized that German civilians had also suffered a great deal, sometimes at the hands of their own military.
"We were stationed in Germany and someone asked me if I'd heard about Hitler's plans to create a super race," Leon began. "I had, but only a little bit. There was a young girl in this town that some German soldiers had tried to take away from her family because she looked like a perfect Aryan. Her father stopped them from taking her but he was killed while trying."
As Leon thought about that girl, his voice began to waver.
"I was there for a few months and I never saw that girl come out of her house again until the last day, when she came out to say goodbye to us as we were leaving."
When the girl finally came out, Leon reached into his pocket and gave her a chocolate bar.
Sixty-eight years after he'd given away that chocolate bar, Leon began to cry.
His eyes became red and puffy and he turned away.
That German girl would be an old woman today, if she was alive at all, but it was obvious Leon had not, could not, would not forget about her.
There were fond memories for Leon as well. He was struck by Holland's beauty, by the windmills and the meadows bursting with flowers and by the joy of the people he'd helped liberate.
The conversation turned to the dwindling number of veterans that are left and how the importance of those that remain has only increased.
"In the past couple of years I've been invited to more events than I ever have before," Leon said.
In the post-war years, having served in Europe was as common as going to university is today. Most of the young men around Edgar, Leon and Roman's age would have served. Now, though, times have changed. Canada hasn't been involved in a major ground war since Korea and the people that we most closely associate with Remembrance Day - veterans of the First and Second World War - are all but gone (Canada's last WWI veteran died in 2010).
Will the character and tone of Remembrance Day change when the last Second World War veteran is gone? Will young people appreciate the horror of that war as much if they aren't visited by a living, breathing veteran every Nov. 11?
The conversation over, the three veterans and the veteran's wife began to file away. Sixty-eight years ago they spent a spring together in Holland without even knowing it. Nearly seven decades later, the impact of that spring brought them all together again.
