Full fathom five thy father lies
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
In Nova Scotia, that little tract of land clinging like an appendix to the great body of Canada, my brother and I drive from Halifax to Yarmouth on the south west coast. It is our first order of business. We owe a minor debt of remembrance to our father, who was stationed here during the war.
My father had what he liked to call a lazy left eye, by which he meant, I think, an astigmatism, one which I have inherited; and it was this which prevented him (and me, I suppose) from being trained as a pilot in the Fleet Air Arm, for which he had volunteered in 1943. But he was taken on as a telegraphist air-gunner. Next best thing. He spent the war years sitting in the back of an open-topped biplane (Fairey Swordfish) and, later, a closed-cockpit monoplane (Fairey Barracuda), mostly looking for U-boats over the Atlantic, and not finding them. Lazy left eye.
For some reason, the Fleet Air Arm situated their telegraph air-gunner training site at Yarmouth in Nova Scotia on an airfield administered by the Royal Canadian Air Force. East Camp, as it was known, lies just outside the town. We find it without too much difficulty. It is now a private, fenced-off piece of land. Just inside the entrance, there is a sort of memorial rock, which we inspect.
We are challenged by the owner, who drive up in an SUV. We tell him why we are here, and his manner changes. He invites us to look around.
The airfield is now a seaweed-drying facility. Black seaweed is strewn over the great field, and tractors go about with whirling rakes behind them which churn up the seaweed, let it dry in the Canadian sun before it is collected, processed, sold.
It smells as you would expect. A great foetid seaboard smell.
Seaweed is lucrative, our host tells us. He seems surprised that we do not know how useful it is. The seaweed he sells is used in a variety of medicinal and beauty products, and in biofuels. We nod. He urges us to drive on up and take a look.
…
Our father arrived at East Camp in early 1944, but was almost immediately invalided off the course for treatment of an acute appendicitis. He was evacuated to Toronto where he was operated on, under local anaesthetic, his forehead mopped, as he liked to recall, by an especially attractive nurse. From Toronto he found his way to New York, and then rejoined the Telegraphist Air-Gunner course on its next intake, in April that year, and remained until 21st August, when he was transferred to 815 Squadron on the Isle of Mann.
…
In the Yarmouth County Museum there is , among other things, a peculiar inscribed stone, known as the Yarmouth Stone, or the Yarmouth Runic Stone. The stone—a lump of quartzite—was discovered in 1812 by Dr. Richard Fletcher near the head of Yarmouth harbour.
Various translations have been proposed for the scrawl of apparent runes. Most commonly they have been taken to be Old Norse. In 1875, Henry Phillips Jr. transliterated them as “Harkussen Men Varu” – “Harkko’s son addressed to men”, Harki being one of the followers of Thorfinn Karlsefne who around 1010AD followed the route Leif Erikkson had taken to Vinland in the west. A later version (1934) rendered it “Laeifr Eriku Risr” – “Leif to Eric raises (this monument)”. In this case the translator, Olaf Strandwold had no knowledge of Old Norse, but this was his best guess. The ‘runes’ have also been interpreted as Japanese (“wabi deka Kuturade bushi goku" —"Kuturade, the eminent warrior, has died in peace”) and also Mycenaean, Basque, Hungarian, Welsh, Mayan and Siberian. Some accuse Dr. Fletcher of having perpetrated a hoax; others have noted the possibility that a strong advocate of the Norse theory, the Reverend Gordon Lewis, ‘improved’ the faint markings with a hammer and chisel at some point in the 1930s.
Over the years there have been rumours of other stones with similar inscriptions, on outlying islands, or in the salt marshes, or incorporated into dry stone walls. None can currently be found.
…
My father was a keen photographer in his youth. During the war, he took photographs from the open cockpit of planes flying in formation, and snaps from the places he visited with the Navy—Canada, Scotland, Ceylon.
My brother has brought with him one of the photographs my father took in Yarmouth, of a wooden building.
In the Yarmouth County Museum we ask the attendant where that building might be. It turns out it is unmissable, a landmark on the only street in town, more or less. We might as well go to Paris and show someone a picture of the Eiffel Tower. So we are able to find the point on the street where our father stood when the picture was taken (at the cinema, mid-way down on the left of the street, Bataan with Robert Taylor is playing; also, 'Canadians in Sicily').
So there my brother and I stand, reading the runic signs, before we move on. Signs of seaweed pitched up on the land. Other transformations, of stone or lynx.
Robert Henry Ferris raises this monument. Robert Henry Ferris, the eminent warrior, has died in peace.
