The Tribune

SHORTLY after marrying his wife in 1943, Comrade Rueben Hamilton, 87, went to war.

His wife, who died in January this year, after 70 years with Mr Hamilton, had just given birth to their first child.

She did not approve of Mr Hamilton going to fight: “Oh my she didn’t like it,” he told The Tribune, in an interview as part of our countdown to Remembrance Day, on November 11.

As upset as she was, she dealt with the arrangement by expressing her love through letters while he was in Jamaica training and serving as a chef.

“When I was in Jamaica she used to write me telling me she missed me very much,” he said, adding that he has had 14 children with his wife, whom he met while he was an operator for the police force in the early 1940s.

Mr Hamilton said that though he received letters from his wife, he was unable to send letters back to her because “we were moving from place to place.”

Though the adventurous “younger version” of himself felt justified going to war, Mr Hamilton said he would never have participated if given the choice again.

“I would’ve missed my family too much,” he said.

His oldest daughter, Rachel Hamilton-Strachan, 70, was too young to remember when her father left home during the Second World War but said her mother often told her about his heroic gesture.

“My mom used to tell me how, when he was away, she used to miss him so much and she explained that he went to fight for everyone and that he came back because they won,” she said.

The war taught him a lot of self-discipline, Mr Hamilton said, adding that it was that self-discipline that helped him establish his family owned business, the Modern School of Driving, located on Andros Ave and Woodes Lane in New Providence.

Speaking about his experiences during the war, he said: “We had to get up in time, had to do this and that on time; they had a list and you had to follow it.”

Like many Bahamian Second World War veterans, Mr Hamilton didn’t engage in active combat against enemy forces.

Most of the action he experienced happened during training, which wasn’t hard but was strenuous, he said.

“We had to come up to the mark,” he said. “We had to go in holes and over holes and we had to swim in water while exercising.”

Most of his instructors were “nice and normal,” but not all, he said, adding: “We had one tough one, Mr Granger. He would yell at you and tell you to do this and that and he would come and inspect you and make sure you did it.”

Mr Hamilton said Mr Granger frequently told the soldiers to “get cracking” and seemed to have more to prove than the other leaders.

Another Second World War veteran, Comrade Leonard Knowles, 87, said he found the war to be valuable for the life skills it gave him.

Mr Knowles, who has been married to Gloria Moxey-Knowles for 65 years, joined the war as a worker in the engineering aircraft mechanic section.

“I was grateful for the opportunity to sit next to pilots running the aircrafts,” he said. “After the war I continued in my mechanic work when the training was useful to me.”

The training he received during the war enabled him to travel the world using his skills. “I went to Canada, Washington, all over and saw the first BahamasAir jet being built,” he said, adding that he was one of the crew members who went to the United States to bring the first BahamasAir jet to Nassau.

He stopped working with BahamasAir in 1981 but added that his love for planes was transferred to his 60-year-old son, Edward Knowles.

Mrs Moxey-Knowles said that her son, inspired by his father, “went to school to learn how to fix planes. He never wanted to fly, though. If you gave him a plane for Christmas, before lunchtime the plane would be taken apart and he would be there trying to see how it worked and trying to fix it.”

Their son currently works in the maintenance department at BahamasAir.

Mr Knowles said he wished Bahamians appreciated what veterans did for their country more.

“If they knew their history they would think of us more than they do,” he said.