Hero
David J. Rhine
In honour of Ronald Lewis Rhine, Royal Canadian Navy, MTB 748, 1925–2020
I took my dad to the Remembrance
Day ceremonies for the last time
in November 2019 and was
reminded that he is a hero, as is
every man and woman who has
served our country.
I never regarded my dad as
a hero until we visited Holland
in 2005 as part of an invited
Canadian delegation to celebrate
the liberation that took place
sixty years before. Canadians
were central to this liberation and
now have a special relationship
with the Dutch. The Canadian
vets were greeted with cheers,
handshakes, applause, tears,
and hugs from the Dutch, who
hold these men up as heroes
who freed their country, and I
began to see him as a hero as
well.
Dad went to war at age 17.
Like many small-town Canadian
boys, he felt drawn to the war by
his allegiance to Canada and the
need to follow in the footsteps
of other young men who had left
their community to serve, some
never to return. Those who gave
their lives are obviously heroes,
but those who returned, scarred
both physically and mentally, are
heroes as well.
Dad served as a signalman on a
motor torpedo boat on the English
Channel doing night raids while
chased by German U-boats. He
was stationed in the bottom of
the boat, receiving and sending
intelligence messages with the
Allies in the channel.
Without training, he also
cared for the wounded who were
sent below, often with horrific
life-ending injuries. One of his
nightmarish stories is sewing
together a man whose abdomen
had been shredded open, bowels
spilling forth, Dad tucking parts
back in, with terror and certainty
that the man would not survive.
Decades later at a Navy reunion,
this man identified himself to
Dad with thanks for saving his
life. This interaction did not bring
relief or a sense of success to Dad;
it instead brought back memories
of the sailors he couldn’t help, a
sense of failure and terror.
I learned that on many
occasions, Dad was dropped
behind enemy lines for
clandestine purposes. Once, on a
German beach under darkness,
a German sentry passed by so
closely that he was within reach;
so close in fact that Dad could
smell the German’s cigarette
smoke and the odour of alcohol.
Fortunately, the German was so
drunk that he was oblivious to my
dad’s near presence, preventing a
fight and saving them both.
Although I have no details of
his many other sorties behind
enemy lines, I assume that other
interactions did not go so well
for the enemy because ultimately
Dad came home. I have looked at
his massive hands and wondered
what they had done that he dared
not speak about. His hands held
us as children and held my
mother; they taught me to hit
a baseball and stake my tent.
What secrets lay within their
grip?
Although he came home in
1945 physically intact, he was
mentally scarred. As a child I
wanted to hear his war stories. He
didn’t want to share them, and
only now can I better understand
what he did and how it affected
his life. PTSD (post traumatic
stress disorder), once known as
shell shock or battle fatigue, is
now recognized as an insidious,
never relenting, and debilitating
result of his war experience.
For Dad, PTSD was the price he
paid to serve and come home: the
night terrors, high anxiety, and
temper. When he was healthy and
had his personal defence system
in place — my mother Kay — his
PTSD was less obvious. Later, the
PTSD only worsened. My mother
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