THE ADVOCATE 465
VOL. 80 PART 3 MAY 2022
FROM OUR
BACK PAGES
By D. Michael Bain,Q.C.
WHEN YOU COME HOME*
By Brigadier Sherwood Lett, D.S.O., M.C., E.D.†
You will not have much time yet for your personal post-war
planning—unless you have been nursing a plaster cast in a hospital
somewhere. You and your Frigate, your Platoon or your
Squadron are still too busy winning the war. Some of us used to
find an “official talk” on “rehabilitation” a trifle hard to take when the problem
uppermost in our mind was whether or not there would be anyone left
to rehabilitate, after the next salvo arrived.
But don’t forget that however nebulously you may have thought over the
problem in general, one day suddenly you personally are going to have to
take a decision about it.
The Government, as you know, has planned to deal and is dealing quite
generously with Service men. Citizens’ voluntary committees, Boards of
Trade, Service Clubs, Veterans’ and Legion Groups are all organizing to
assist you. This time I think you will find things are so teed up that the welcome
isn’t quite all over when the band stops playing and the echoes of the
cheering fade against the station walls. Your heart will really be warmed by
official and unofficial people who genuinely wish to see you get going again
in civil life.
But you are the person who must produce a plan, for after all it’s your life,
not theirs.
* Reprinted from (1945) 3 Advocate 118.
† Published in the (U.B.C.) Graduate Chronicle, to whom, and to Brig. Lett, the Advocate is indebted for their permission.