One of the highlights of the annual Remembrance Day ceremony at Queen’s Park has always been when the Canadian Forces’ oldest, highest-ranking general took the stage and told everyone his job was to “speak for the troops.”
But for the past few years, that voice has been missing at the November 11 observance. Thankfully, it will return for this year’s ceremony.
Richard Rohmer is a marvel. He is 100 years old and has run out of fingers on which to count the number of times he’s cheated death over the years. The most recent brush came over the past couple of years, when he caught a virus of some kind, then collapsed at his home in Collingwood. He was out cold for a few hours, and if he hadn’t been found, he surely would have died.
“I don’t remember any of it,” Rohmer tells me during a recent visit at his new home in the veterans’ wing of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre in Toronto.
“You’ve cheated death a few times,” I say.
“Once or twice,” he responds. “In doing my tour of operation, I was cheating death every day.”
Lieutenant-General Richard Rohmer, who now lives in the veterans' wing at Sunnybrook Health Science Centre in Toronto, holding his latest book. The general has written more than 30 books during his 100 years on Earth. (Steve Paikin)
Rohmer is referring to his duties during the Second World War, when he flew reconnaissance missions over France after D-Day. What put him in the history books happened on July 17, 1944. He spotted a German military vehicle speeding down a French highway, so he called in the location to headquarters. Shortly thereafter, in came a Spitfire. It opened fire on the car, killing the driver and sending the car off the road. The man in the passenger seat was critically injured, but alive. That man turned out to be “the Desert Fox,” Erwin Rommel, one of the highest-ranking members of the German Army.
Rommel, a World War I hero in Germany, was eventually hospitalized, then recovered and wanted to return to duty. But when Hitler discovered Rommel’s participation in a plot to kill the Führer, he offered his general a choice: be stripped of your rank and tried as a traitor or swallow a fatal cyanide tablet and receive a hero’s funeral. Rommel opted for the latter.
Items on display in the museum at the Sunnybrook veterans' wing in Toronto. (Steve Paikin)
But back to Rohmer, who, since his recovery from that virus, has been enjoying a renaissance of sorts. Back in September, the Municipality of Meaford, in Grey County, renamed its airport the Major-General Richard Rohmer Meaford International Airport. In the same month, Barrie renamed a roundel in the city’s Military Heritage Park in honour of Rohmer.
But, even more important, Rohmer recently received a call from Premier Doug Ford asking him to reprise his role at Queen’s Park on November 11 to “speak for the troops.”
“I was thrilled to get the premier’s call,” Rohmer says. “But now that I’m feeling better, I was going to be there whether he liked it or not.”
Rohmer is a remarkably feisty fellow for 100 years old. And his sense of humour is completely intact. During our visit, several Sunnybrook employees tended to him, all of them calling him “General.”
“Does everyone here at Sunnybrook call you ‘the General’?” I ask him.
“They do,” he says. “I make sure. I worked hard to become that.” (Rohmer is one of 200 veterans living at Sunnybrook. He’s not even the oldest, who’s 106.)
Canadian military equipment and souvenirs at the museum in the Sunnybrook veterans' wing. (Steve Paikin)
When we discuss his war exploits and I observe that his memory for detail is still pretty good, he responds, “No, it’s very good — except when it’s convenient for it not to be.”
Rohmer may be 100, but how old does he feel?
“I feel 75,” he says, “particularly when I see a good-looking woman go by.”
Rohmer, who was born in Hamilton, still remembers the moment he decided to become a pilot. He was three years old, visiting a park in Buffalo, when he looked up to the sky and saw a plane fly by.
He was hooked.
The day he turned 18 — January 24, 1942 — he dropped out of Fort Erie High School and enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force. He flew 135 missions during the war and remembers being “shot at all the time.” Once, Rohmer watched as 13 anti-aircraft bullets ripped through his Mustang plane. “But I always got through it all right,” he says. “Those were the best years of my life because I survived them.”
Lieutenant-General Richard Rohmer speaks "for the troops" at the Queen's Park Remembrance Day service in 2016. (Steve Paikin)
Astonishingly, Rohmer has written more than 30 books, including one he’s been working on over the past few years. It’s called Canada’s Arctic: Moscow’s Next Ukraine, and it’s a fictitious account of something the general is deeply concerned about: Russian submarine threats to our sovereignty in the Arctic Ocean.
“I can imagine this happening,” he warns.
The plot revolves around what happens when the Canadian Forces find out Russia is trying to take back what it believes are its islands in the Arctic.
Rohmer wrote the book by hand and had someone else type it out for him. “I read it again the other day, and I thought, ‘That’s not bad,’” he says. Rohmer’s daughter Ann, the long-time broadcaster, is still searching for a publisher for the book.
If you get to Queen’s Park on November 11, make sure you take some time to explore the 18-year-old granite veterans memorial — especially the depiction of Rohmer’s Mustang aircraft engraved on the wall.
But most of all, listen to the wisdom of a century-old lieutenant-general, who will be back where he belongs.
Donate