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AND YOU HAVE A NEW BOOK, HOW TET, THANKS FOR JOINING US, NOT SO ABOUT RUSH TO DANGER MEDICS IN THE LION OF FIRE. Well, first of all, thank you for your call. I appreciate it, especially on the eve of such an important day. We're remembering very visible heroes in our past, all those wartime engagements you talked about.
But among the lesser known and more invisible people have been the medics. And I've long had an attachment to their story because my dad was one. He was a medic in the American Army during the Second World War. Some of you may be familiar with the name Alex Barris.
Yes, yes. The fact that the internalist and the television host from Paige Challenge and the Barris Beaten and newspapers and so on years ago. Before all that, he grew up in New York City. And so, his story always entered.
Which of Dad? Is he your dad? He is my father, but he was just any longer. Dad died in 2004.
And we had a very strong relationship with the father in time because we were co-authors, co-authors, co-authors, co-hosts, who were a lot of stuff together and broadcasting in print. And he shared with me a lot of us experience. He was involved in the Battle of the Bald, which was the American most bloody campaign in the Second World War, even worse than I would even worse than I would even worse than he would even worse than he would even worse than he would even worse than he would even worse than he would even worse than he would. And he was a medic in the middle of all of that.
And I always wanted to know, he had given me tidbits, but after he died, I went chasing after his story and I found it. And it was more even more extraordinary than I anticipated. Well, I'm so respectful of what your father did because the medics are the ones who were so constantly in the line of fire while they were helping, they're wounded, seriously wounded comrades. It's a tremendous, it's really an avocation to be doing this.
That's why the total, by the way, from the trouble we were running toward it. Who are some of the Canadians in war and conflict who remained etched in your memory or the events that you've written 19 books nonfiction about the wars? What really stands out? Sticks in your memory.
Oh, God, there's so many. I go all the way back to the Civil War, obviously Canadians not involved. There was a woman who was in disguise as a medic in fighting for the North from New Brunswick. She said, it would take too long to describe.
The one that pops into my head right away is John McCray, of course. John McCray was a, you know, we knew him for the wonderful poem that will be recited hundreds of times tomorrow in Flanders Field. But he was also a medic in the sense that he went over with the artillery in 1914 and served as a medical officer with the artillery. But then he participated in one of those extraordinary phenomena that nobody knows about that helped the wounded during the First World War.
That was the notion that if we could transplant these great medical schools that existed in Canada, such as the one at McGill, where he had actually trained. If we just pulled them up, holispolis and transplanted them, transported them to France, maybe we could serve the wounded better. And that's exactly what they did. McGill University of the Teaching School made its professors and teachers into medical officers, and its students into orderlies grabbed a bunch of nurses who were working with them, I should say, grabbed and listed them, and took them all over, said, 1700 people and made number three Canadian general hospital behind the great war.
And that's where McCray served, and where he described the bodies tumbling into his area of operation. He was literally created a bunker along a trench line, and he said that the bodies were falling around him, and it was the delivery of the wounded because of the hillsides, it was even better than the Montreal Ambulance Service. He was just inundated, and it was because of this incredible trauma that he went through that he saw one of his dearest friends, Alexis Helmer killed, and it was in those moments between operations in the surgeons area that he composed a poem. An incredible light, but attached to a phenomenon that not many people realize saved many lives.
Now, I was wondering earlier today on the show what exactly might have motivated him to write the poem. I hadn't heard that he'd written it between these surgeries. Thanks for sharing that. And Ted, thanks for everything you do to keep the memories and the sacrifice of the generations of Canadians before all of us will take it also.
Seriously, as we should tomorrow and commemorate and thank them for everything they've done on your website, TedBarris.com. Man, I'd like people to join me tomorrow at the Canadian War Plan Heritage Museum, where they broadcast on their own. They'll be speaking in the hangar at the museum at the park at broadcast. I appreciate it, Ted.
Thank you so much for everything you've done. Always good to talk to you, and we'll stay safe. We vote for sure. TedBarris, it's TedBarris.com.
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