World War II Telegraphs: An Interview with Grant Falhman
This article was originally published in the Spring 2016 Edition of Folklore Magazine.
Bill Armstrong is a Regina-based writer. In 2015, he took an interdisciplinary course called ''Ecomuseums: Exploring Place," at the University of Regina. One of the course assignments involved interviewing people who live or have lived in the Rural Municipality of Edenwold. The following is an excerpt from an interview that Bill conducted with Grant Fahlman, a member of the Kronau Museum Board.
Bill Armstrong.
Born in 1948, Grant Fahlman grew up on a family farm just west of Kronau, Saskatchewan. He later took over the family farm. He retired in 2003 and moved into Regina.
Grant told me this story. His father, Chris, passed it on to him. Grant asked me not to identify the town where this story took place, to spare the feelings of any descendants still living there.
Grant’s story goes like this:
“During the Second World War, my father took a job as a grain buyer at a nearby town to help with the farm finances.
Small town life is often portrayed as peaceful, but there are divisions; not everybody gets along. My father told me that, for whatever reason, the town’s telegraph operator didn't get along with this one family.
Of course, at that time the telegram was an important means of communication, and the telegraph operator was the one who sent and received all the messages for people in the town. During the war many people received the news by telegram that a loved one was wounded, missing or had been killed.
So it was that this family had three sons overseas. And one day the telegraph operator delivered one of the dreaded telegrams to the family. He didn’t say anything more than, “Here's your telegram.”
Several months later he delivered a second telegram to that same family. This time, he went home to his wife and cried.
Later, he had to deliver a third telegram. This time, he went into the home and cried with the family.
That story made a deep impression on my father, and I've also kept it in my memory as an example of how old grudges can be overcome by shared feelings."
Photo by Kristin Enns-Kavanagh.
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Cover image licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license. This image has been modified and was originally posted to Flickr by Marine Corps Archives & Special Collections at https://flickr.com/photos/60868061@N04/15513537286.