By Pamela Stephens
When Paul Métivier was 16-years-old he and his best friend lied to get into the Canadian army so he could go to war and “ride horses.”
It was a romantic notion that soon turned sour amid the carnage of the battlefields of the First World War.
“If you ask ‘did I see blood?’ Yes, I saw blood,” he recalls of his service in France and Belgium.
“I saw a river of blood flowing down the road from all the men who were killed by the shells that were falling.”
He’s 104 now and legally blind and nearly deaf, but Métivier’ memories of the 10 months he spent on active service more than 80 years ago are undiminished.
“I have souvenirs from all the places I have been,” he says, smiling and interlacing his fingers during an interview at the retirement lodge in Sandy Hill he now calls home. “But the memories of the things I have seen are what I have the most of.”
Born on July 6, 1900, in Montreal, Métivier, was one of 619,636 Canadian men and women who served in the war that was supposed to end all wars.
Today, he is the youngest of what are believed to be 13 surviving First World War veterans.
Métivier was among the very lucky. More than 66,000 other Canadians died and almost 173,000 were wounded.
Nearly one of every 10 Canadians who fought in the war did not return home.
That sacrifice was remembered this week across the country; in Ottawa at the National War Memorial on Elgin Street .
Métivier says he usually attends when he is able.
During the interview, Métivier chuckles as he tells a reporter that his recall of his many war stories is certainly helped by having repeated them so often.
He says he once saw a German plane spray Canadian troops with machine-gun fire before the pilot parachuted down as the plane crashed.
“Luckily, one of our guys was there to punch him in the mouth and he fell backward into the mud,” he recalls.
Another time, he found a dead German soldier in a dugout and “the bones from his ribs down were on the bench and his bones from everywhere else were on the floor because he was killed in that spot by a blast.”
Métivier also supplied ammunition to an 18-pound field cannon, working surreptitiously throughout the night.
He also took care of an officer’s horse while overseas but his battle exploits came to an end in October 1918 when his mother informed a local MP of his real age.
He was sent back to Canada just two months shy of a full year of service.
“When the government discovered my age they sent me back to England and I served the rest of the war in what they called the Boys Battalion,” he says.
“Then I was sent back home to Canada where I found a job working for the government as a mapper, etching plates to print maps. I worked there until I went out on leave at 65.”
One of seven children, a father of five, grandfather of 11 and great-grandfather of 16 “and maybe more soon,” Métivier still mourns the loss of a son who died off the coast of Spain in the Second World War.
“My 20-year-old son was in the Air Force,” he remembers. “He was a tail-gunner and a telegraph man . . . he could read over 25 words per minute.”
Despite a long family history of involvement in wars, Métivier says U.S. President George W. Bush’s unilateral war in Iraq is “ridiculous.”
And certainly, the kind of commitment felt by Métivier and others during the First and Second World Wars has diminished.
He lied to get into the army; now some Americans are fleeing the U.S. military to escape serving in Iraq.
Recently, two U.S. soldiers, Jeremy Hinzman and Brandon Hughey, submitted claims to the Canadian Immigration and Refugee Board as conscientious objectors to the war.
Canada has long been acknowledged as a safe haven for those seeking such refuge.
As such, during the Vietnam War more than 50,000 American draft resisters and deserters were welcomed to Canada.
In 1969, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau instructed immigration officials not to discriminate against applicants because they had not fulfilled military obligations as a result of the moral objection to the war.
While Hinzman and Hughey await possible prosecution in the U.S. if their refugee claims fail, Métivier reflects on the recognition he continues to receive for his service in the “Great War.”
With longevity come honours and he has visited Queen Elizabeth, Prince Philip, Governor General Adrienne Clarkson and several ambassadors on several occasions.
“I have been kissed by the Governor General,” he chuckles. “She calls me ‘copain’ . . . and you know what that means!”
Métivier has also been interviewed several times by the media, the “most fantastic” time appearing in a cover photo of La Presse in Montreal, but he says the most important thing is that “we remember the 65,000 men we lost in that war.”
“People are too ready to drop the subject and I think the sacrifices that the soldiers made should never be forgotten,” he says solemnly.
Even so, Métivier is withering in his criticism of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
“I think (it’s) a crazy thing Bush did because he just seems to have made a mess of that invasion,” he reprimands through a weak voice and a thick Quebecois-accent.
“Who does he think he is to be invading another country and trying to tell them how to run their lives? He has already spent billions moving troops and guns . . . only God knows . . . billions!”
While UN Secretary General Kofi Annan has called the war in Iraq “illegal,” Hinzman’s claim to refugee status will begin its review on Dec. 6, 2004.
Hughey’s case has been postponed as a result of recent public service strikes, says Lee Zaslofsky of the War Resisters Support Campaign.
These cases could set a precedent for service dodgers of America’s new war because no American has ever been granted refugee status in Canada.
This is largely because democratic societies are not generally perceived as likely to threaten or persecute their citizens to the point they would be classified as refugees.
Judging from one of Métivier’s soldiering experience in France, one of the last surviving First World War veterans would be unlikely to shut the door on Hinzman and Hughey.
“When I was walking down the street, somebody stopped me and said ‘hey you, you’re a soldier, why don’t you help me? I have so many people in my basement it’s getting dangerous. Will you be a policeman at the door?’” recalls Métivier.
“I said ‘sure’ and I stood at the door . . . but when the first person came, it was a crippled old lady so I said ‘I’m not going to stop her’ and I let her in. Then the second one came and I let him in, too. I decided that shutting them away from safety was not my job.”