One of the last of his generation, Second World War vet in New Brunswick dies – New Brunswick | 24CA News
Angus Hamilton, who served as a radar technician in Southeast Asia in the course of the Second World War and returned dwelling to a profitable profession within the civil service and academia, has died in Fredericton on the age of 100.
Born in Listowel, Ont., on April 18, 1922, Hamilton grew up on a farm, with the Great Depression shaping his early years.
“The war had come at the best possible time for me,” he wrote in his e book, “For King and Country,” one in every of seven he authored chronicling his life.
“I was 17 in 1939 when the war began; I signed up when I was 18 and I had just turned 19 when I reported for duty. I wasn’t close to settling down. I was at the age when adventure calls.”
In an interview in November when he attended a Remembrance Day ceremony in Fredericton, Hamilton mentioned he had needed to be a pilot, “like every boy, but my eyesight was not good enough.” Instead he turned a radar technician with the Royal Canadian Air Force, serving on evening fighter squadrons in Northern Ireland and India till the finish of the warfare.
“During the war none of us was allowed to say where we were or what we were doing, and, after the war no one cared,” he mentioned in one other of his books in regards to the warfare years.
Hamilton died at dwelling final Saturday, simply three days shy of his one hundred and first birthday. His funeral was held Thursday in Fredericton.
His daughter Anne Hamilton mentioned that like most youngsters, she didn’t pay a lot consideration to her dad’s work or his warfare expertise when she was rising up.
“We always knew he had been in India during the war,” she mentioned in an interview Friday. “We knew he’d been in India because we had curry when we were growing up. We were in a very white bread neighbourhood, and we were the only ones on the street who ever had curry.”
Her sister, Elizabeth Hamilton, mentioned that as a teen she thought her father had been in a “different war.”
“The war was in Britain … on the continent, and I could not conceive … everybody up and down the block knew about Europe,” she mentioned. “It was in the news. Nobody in the news talked about India. And nobody talked about Canadians in Southeast Asia.”
While he was principally shielded from fight, Hamilton noticed hearth as soon as in Myanmar, then known as Burma, Elizabeth Hamilton mentioned. His youngsters discovered he was not a fan of the jungle and suffered from malaria, jaundice and abdomen issues throughout his years in India.
For a number of years after he returned from the warfare, Hamilton received depressed round Remembrance Day.
“I sort of never understood it, because I didn’t think he had been in the real war,” Elizabeth Hamilton mentioned. “I didn’t find out about it until he started talking about his best friend.”
That buddy, a pilot, died whereas coaching one other airman, she mentioned. Her father revealed that his buddy was probably affected by what’s now known as post-traumatic stress dysfunction and didn’t need to fly.
“It was not just because he had lost a friend, but it was because he knew how tenuous his friend’s hold was on life and sanity …. Dad was angry that his friend had been put into this situation.”
But it was the “very clear sense of service” and obligation that led him and his buddies to enroll in the warfare, she added.
“It changed his life,” mentioned her sister. “It gave him an education, which he wouldn’t have got otherwise.”
After returning dwelling from the warfare, Hamilton moved to Ottawa for a profession of surveying and mapping positions in what’s now the Department of Natural Resources. He finally moved to Fredericton to develop into chairman of the division of surveying engineering on the University of New Brunswick.
John McLaughlin, who went on to develop into UNB president, was employed by Hamilton in 1972 as a lecturer within the surveying engineering division.
He recalled his first assembly with a person who wasn’t flashy or charismatic however had an authoritative presence, exerting intelligence and expertise that impressed confidence.
McLaughlin mentioned Hamilton is “the very end of that sort of generation” who have been formed by world warfare and emerged tenacious, considerate, humble and resilient. Tim Cook, analysis director on the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa, mentioned he believes there are probably fewer than 20,000 Canadian veterans of the Second World War nonetheless alive.
“He’s part of a generation who went to war, over a million Canadians went to war, and he came back and then sort of built this terrific country,” McLaughlin mentioned. “In many ways, it’s the very end of that era.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first printed April 22, 2023.
© 2023 The Canadian Press
