Among them was a private enlisted under the name Harris Greenwood, who would go on to serve under Lieutenant-Colonel Sam Sharpe, beneath whom he would win numerous honours and medals in his four years of combat service for bravery, mainly as a stretcher bearer. This starry performance was a surprise since, at first, many of his fellow soldiers wondered at Private Greenwood’s apparent lack of knowledge related to military drills, procedure, or protocol. In addition to the sorry state in which he kept his uniform and equipment, it was commonly remarked among those in his regiment that it often seemed as though Private Greenwood had never been to basic training at all.
NO RETURN
THE DAY BEFORE his regiment’s troopship was due to sail from Quebec City, Harris came staggering through the snow into town around noon, still in his bedclothes, his hands grasping blindly before him and hollering: “Where’s Everett? Where’s my brother?” He grabbed everyone he came across, tearing at their lapels, pulling them close so his dim eyes could gather an approximation of their faces.
When we informed Harris that the other boys in his regiment had departed by rail that morning, he let out a guttural cry and attacked the tavern with the dung shovel kept outside for the horses hitched there. After it took three grown men lying atop him in a snowbank to subdue the boy, Harris claimed that he’d woken that morning to find himself lashed to his own bedframe with a riding saddle. It was three hours before he managed to spin the heavy saddle around and work its buckles loose. When he did, he searched the cabin and found his uniform and service equipment gone. We have since all agreed that if Harris could’ve got his hands on his brother Everett that afternoon, he would have finally killed him.
We were reluctant to notify the Department of Militia and Defence of the switch, however, because even after all their missteps and delinquencies, we still felt some responsibility for those boys and didn’t want to see either in a military prison. Besides, the Greenwood boys had taken an oath to provide the Dominion with a soldier, and they’d made good on that oath, and we saw no harm done.
After his brother went overseas in his stead, we seldom saw Harris Greenwood. Living alone with his vision failing, he was unable to cut more than a few cords for himself that winter, and to survive he was forced to sell off the stockpile they’d built up over the years. A few of us went out to his place that spring and found him almost fully blind, grubby, and half-starved. We took pity on him, passed the hat in church, and enrolled him in a newly established academy for the deaf and blind in Montreal. The headmaster there, a Mr. Gilles Thibault, had studied at Yale, and immediately took a liking to Harris’s shrewd intellect, entrepreneurial ambitions, and uncanny strength. We’ve heard that Mr. Thibault installed Harris prominently on the school’s rowing team, and that the boy’s powerful arms and iron grip drove them deep into the national finals, trouncing many of Montreal’s upper-crust schools by multiple boat lengths. Mr. Thibault arranged lessons for Harris in Latin, Greek, mathematics, and ancient history. By this point, Harris could only read with the aid of the thickest eyeglasses available, and only with the book held three inches from his face. Like an actor fighting to remain on stage as the curtains close and the lights are snuffed out, Harris feverishly gleaned all he could on every subject, especially forestry. In fact, it was with Mr. Thibault’s recommendation that Harris applied to Yale’s newly established forestry school, where a special oral entrance exam was devised which included questions on physiology, trigonometry, and botany. Harris trounced the exam and was the first Canadian to gain admittance to the esteemed program, and from all accounts he excelled there. He studied scientific log extraction and forest product management—activities he’d performed all his life, now on a much grander scale. Despite his disability, he was a popular fixture in the university’s botanical laboratories and its legendary Peabody herbarium, where we’ve heard he passed his days opening each one of their thousands of specimen drawers, learning each tree by running its pressed leaves against his fingertips.
We can’t claim this for certain, but many of us speculate that it must’ve been during his time there in Connecticut, probably all alone in his single dormitory room, when both of Harris Greenwood’s retinas finally detached—like a pair of mussels that have lost their grip on a rock—and the world he’d known was gone for good.
COULD’VE GONE EITHER WAY
HARRIS RETURNED FROM Yale three years later, a new man. He’d traded his logger’s garb for a tweed suit and a well-formed hat. He brought another man back with him, a short, sturdy fellow who drove Harris’s automobile and helped him get around. “Meet my second in command, Mort Baumgartner,” Harris proudly declared, shaking each of our hands with his strong grip. What exactly he was in command of wasn’t initially clear.
Still, we held a celebration at the community hall to mark our native son’s return. Harris claimed he’d written to his brother many times over the years, but Everett could still neither read nor write, so no replies were received. At the dinner, Harris toasted our generosity, and loudly proclaimed to have forgiven his brother for his trickery. He then expressed his intention to found a logging company with him as a full partner, upon Everett’s return. The coming post-war boom was predicted to spike the price of commodities like metal, chemicals, coal, as well as timber, and it was common knowledge that lumber concerns worth any salt were poised to make a killing.
While they awaited the ceasefire, Harris and Baumgartner stayed three months in the crooked log cabin, travelling extensively throughout the region, cruising for timber, making maps, hatching plans, and tagging half of the Craig woodlot for logging. Then, just prior to demobilization, we learned from a local boy who was serving overseas as a medical orderly that a Private Greenwood had been admitted to the No. 5 Canadian General Hospital at Liverpool.
“Was he hurt?” Harris asked when we informed him, his hands clawing at the armchair he was sitting in.
We told him there was no mention of physical injury, and that he was awaiting transfer back to Canada. Harris then asked us to see to it that a letter he’d written for Everett be delivered immediately to the hospital, and that the orderly from our township read it to him personally and confirm that Private Greenwood had understood it. We did as instructed, though prior to sending the letter we steamed open the envelope—not out of nosiness, but rather to ensure it didn’t contain some kind of murderous challenge or lingering grudge—and found an earnest proposition for the terms of their partnership, along with a stilted apology for Harris’s stubbornness about cutting the entire woodlot, and a modified proposal to cut just half as Everett had suggested. It ended with a request for Everett to return home immediately following his discharge.
After Harris learned his brother had been read the letter and that he’d accepted the proposal and intended to return home, he borrowed funds from our local bank to finance a great feast to be held in Everett’s honour. Harris and Baumgartner doubled their efforts in the weeks following, and managed to secure a preferred rate with the Canadian National Railway to have their timber transported to the mills in Kingston once it was cut.