'The big thing is what they went through': the memories of the first generation to not see a war

His grandfather served in the First World War, his father fought in the second and John McNeil was destined to fight in the Third World War.

He found himself on the frontlines of the Cold War in the early 1960s, stationed in West Germany with the Canadian Forces.

McNeil, who grew up on Manitoulin Island in northern Ontario, was assigned to an anti-tank gun.

Now 80, he's confident he could still fire it.

"All I figured if I gotta fight, I gotta fight," says the retired Sudbury miner.

But the great war against the Soviet Union and Communism never came and McNeil's generation was the first to never see combat.

"The stories that I heard. I really didn't want no part of that. And I don't think anybody today wants part of that. Because that's terrible," says McNeil.

Those stories did not come from his father or the other Second World War veterans McNeil knew growing up.

"They never talked about war," he says.

"It was always soldiers who were together and then they'd talk. People who had been there and went through it."

But McNeil, an active member of the Lockerby Legion branch in Sudbury, wants to make sure their stories live on and the horrors of war are remembered by Canadians who have known nothing but peace.