CBC Calgary reporter recalls interview with veteran about end of First World War

Sunday — Remembrance Day — will mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War.

All of the veterans of that war are now gone.

But their words and their memories do live on.

CBC reporter Scott Dippel appeared Friday on The Homestretch to recall his own memories of talking with Tom Spear, who was a veteran of the Great War.

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The following is an abridged version of that conversation.

Q: I imagine you've talked with all sorts of veterans over the years, especially around Remembrance Day ... but this was a special conversation you had. Can you tell us about it?

A: This was an interview that I did 20 years ago here in Calgary, and it was all about, at that time, the 80th anniversary of the end of that war. The veteran I spoke with was then 102 years old. Tom Spear was his name.

And you're right, I have talked with a lot of veterans, but this interview, it still stays with me so much, 20 years later. And that's for a few reasons.

Here was a guy who was 102 years old, he was extremely spry. As I discovered sitting there interviewing him in his kitchen at his house in southwest Calgary, his memory of everything in his life was so incredibly sharp. But what was also so memorable for me about this interview was he told me about the story of the day the war ended, on Nov. 11, 1918.

Q: So set the stage for us, what was Tom Spear doing at the end of the war?

A: Tom Spear was in the Canadian Signal Corps and he was a telegrapher. Part of his duties included doing shifts in a special truck that was obviously mobile, moving about behind the front lines. So he and his colleague would spend time in that truck, sending and receiving coded messages. In early November 1918, they were near Valenciennes, France.

Q: What happened on that last day of the war for this soldier?

A: Spear says he and the other soldier were in that special truck, one of them receiving messages from other signallers, and they were passing them along. So it was early in the morning on November 11th 1918, the message of the armistice came in.

So Spear read me the message his comrade received and he then passed along to other units. This was the message that ultimately ended the war.

Q: What did he say it was like to be receiving that message?

A: On one hand, Spear said it was elation as it meant the fighting would soon stop, but he was working feverishly to share that message with other Canadian units.

But it was also a very bittersweet moment for Tom Spear. He says just a few days before the armistice, he had found out that his older brother William had been killed in a German machine-gun attack just a few weeks prior to this. And it was a very emotional moment.

I recall in our interview how he teared up, remembering his brother had died more than 80 years before the day we spoke. But I think it's safe to say it was a very profound day in his life. He remembered so many details of that day.… I asked him about the weather, and he said, "well, it was a very bright, sunny day."

Tom Spear died in September 2000, just shy of his 104th birthday.

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