History / Topics & Posted Articles

Submarine mission aims to recover Avro Arrow jet models from Lake Ontario

The Avro Arrow is rolled out of a hangar in Malton, Ont., in 1957. In 1959, the government abruptly cancelled the program.

KENNY SHARPE
July 18, 2017

Sitting at the bottom of Lake Ontario are believed to be nine scale prototypes of Canada's much-vaunted but cancelled Avro Arrow interceptor jet of the 1950s. Measuring three metres long by two metres wing to wing, the test planes are about one-eighth the size of the full CF-105 Arrow and have been submerged since they plunged into the lake between 1954 and 1957. Soon, if a search team is successful, the prototypes could be brought to the surface and put on display – artifacts of a project that still stirs both pride and bitterness among Canadian aviation enthusiasts.

With the help of a programmable submarine from Newfoundland and Labrador-based Kraken Sonar Inc., a team of scientists and archeologists is focusing on an area just off Point Petre in Ontario's Prince Edward County.

Starting July 24, the ThunderFish autonomous underwater vehicle – a small, pilotless sub equipped with the AquaPix interferometric synthetic aperture sonar – will begin searching the area thought to contain the missing test planes.

The expedition is being headed by John Burzynski of Canadian gold miners Osisko Mining Inc.

It is receiving funding from about a dozen banks and businesses and support from the Canadian Coast Guard, the Royal Canadian Military Institute and the non-profit Canada Company, a support organization for military veterans.

"As professional explorers in the mining business, we initiated this program about a year ago with the idea of bringing back a piece of lost Canadian history to the Canadian public … during this anniversary year of our incredible country," Mr. Burzynski said in a statement.

While he helped get the project off the ground, it's the folks at Kraken who will bring their expertise to help with the underwater search effort.

"People ask, 'Well, do you think you are going to find them?'" said David Shea, Kraken's vice-president of engineering. "The problem isn't the technology. The problem is making sure you are looking in the right place."

Mr. Shea and the team believe the area just off Point Petre is the right location because the test planes were launched from a military base there six decades ago.

"I would guess that [they] went a few thousand feet in the air and I don't think they would be much more than a mile out," said Jack Hurst, who witnessed the launching of the planes.

"Canadian aviation enthusiasts always turn back to the Arrow as being a turning point in Canadian history, where potentially we could have gone on to greater and bigger things," said Major Scott Spurr of the Royal Canadian Air Force.

In the late 1950s, the Avro Arrow was touted as the world's most technologically advanced interceptor jet. From the data obtained testing the aerodynamics of the free-flight scale prototypes – which were attached to rocket boosters and launched over Lake Ontario – just six full-sized planes were produced in Canada. In February, 1959, the government of John Diefenbaker abruptly cancelled the program and ordered the aircraft and the designs destroyed.

The controversial decision meant as many as 30,000 people lost their jobs at Avro Canada and in the country's aerospace industry. Many of Canada's aerospace experts went on to work for Lockheed, Boeing and NASA.

Mr. Shea said the goal of the mission is to find all nine test planes. He said the first five to be launched were made of wood and stainless steel, while the other four were built of titanium and magnesium. He said the "holy grail" would be to find the ninth prototype launched from Point Petre because it would be the most similar to the actual Avro Arrow.

"There will be a lot of corrosion," he said. "The wood would have rotted a fair bit," although at least the test planes have been sitting in fresh water, not the more corrosive salt water of an ocean.

"And there is very little current there, there is no tidal action. … We hope to find them intact," he said, adding that the expedition will still have to deal with any stormy weather conditions, which could delay the mission. Other obstacles include "60 years of growth," which could obscure the artifacts.

Mr. Shea said past attempts to locate the prototypes were unsuccessful because search teams were looking in the wrong place.

Members of the search team say they hope to locate at least one, if not all, of the test planes by the first week of August. Plans will then be made to bring them to the surface, restore them and put them on display at the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa and the National Air Force Museum of Canada in Trenton, Ont.

"These are the kinds of jobs that really stand out," Mr. Shea said. "Years later I'll look back and remember … looking for the Avro Arrow, which as a kid I remember reading books about and studying."

https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/submarine-mission-aims-to-recover-avro-arrow-jet-prototypes-from-lake-ontario/article35728162/

My Canada... Memories of the Second World War

By Anna (Fiedorowicz) Babiarz, as told to Ewa Sulima
Tuesday, July 18, 2017 12:52:36 EDT PM


The Certificate of Identity issued for Anna Fiedorowicz, enabling her to travel to Canada without a passport, after World War II. Miriam King/Bradford Times/Postmedia Network

Anna Fiedorowicz was born in Wilno, Poland (now Lithuania) on November 4, 1919. When Anna was only 8, her mother died of cancer; her father remarried a few years later, and had two more children.

Life was hard. There was little work, and schooling was only up to Grade 4 for all but the wealthy.

When Poland was occupied by the Germans in 1939, German officers asked for people to work for German industries. Some volunteered, others were forced. Anna volunteered and ended up working on a farm in a small village near Frankfurt, Germany, owned by a German officer and his wife, Sabina.

Anna did domestic work around the house and gardens, and worked on the farm with other Polish workers and a few Russians. Most of the produce from the farm, such as potatoes, carrots, cabbage and wheat, was sent to feed the German army.

Although Anna never met the German officer, she got along well with his wife, Sabina. A sense of trust was built; Anna recalls feeling like family. She had her own room in the house, she was given a key to the food storage room and told to “help yourself.”

When the two went shopping in the village, Sabina would buy dresses for Anna. In public, Anna would have to remain silent, as Sabina was afraid of repercussions if others discovered Anna was not German.

In March 1945, when Frankfurt was captured by the Allies, Anna remembers the bombings that terrified everyone in the village. For several days, they were afraid to venture outside.

At the end of the war, Sabina went with other wives to wait for the return of their husbands, all German soldiers. She waited, but her husband never came back. They never learned his fate.

After the war, the German governments, East and West, were required to pay war reparations. Anna chose not to apply to receive any sort of monetary compensation, because her time spent on the farm with Sabina was a pleasant memory. At one time, while on the farm, Sabina told her, “After the war is over, stay with us.”

Anna was touched by the offer – but she had other plans. Afraid to return to Poland, now occupied by the Russians, Anna decided to come to Canada, to “have a better future.”

On January 9, 1948, Anna received her “Certificate of Identity in Lieu of Passport,” a document that could be used for entrance to Canada. She had to spend another year in a “displaced persons” camp set up by the Allies, before travelling by ship to Canada. Arriving in Montreal, Anna eventually made her way to Toronto, where she was employed in housekeeping at the King Edward Hotel. In 1954, she met Felix Babiarz at a Veteran's Club in Toronto. They married shortly thereafter.

By 1980, the couple chose to sell their home in Toronto and move to Bradford, to a house on Hurd St. When Felix passed away in 2003, after 49 years of marriage, Anna moved in with Ewa and Marek Sulima, and their children – now her extended family.

All these years later, Anna still has her “Certificate of Identity,” and her memories – both of an unexpected friendship on a farm outside Frankfurt, and of a life of opportunity in Canada.

Sadly, Anna passed away on July 8, and did not have the opportunity to see her story in print.

http://www.bradfordtimes.ca/2017/07/18/my-canada-memories-of-the-second-world-war

Second World War veteran returns to his former port of call

Honourable William Winegard, who is believed to be the youngest member of Canada's navy, returns to Halifax.

CTV Atlantic
Published Sunday, July 16, 2017 2:39PM ADT

A veteran who is believed to have been the youngest member of Canada’s navy has returned to Halifax – his former port of call – to relive the city as it once was.

Honourable William Winegard served on corvettes and was part of a crew that took the surrender of a German submarine near the end of World War II when he was just 17 years old.

"Against all kinds of odds these little ships, these little corvettes carried the bulk of the Battle of the Atlantic issues," he says.

Now living in Guelph, Ont., Halifax has always been a home away from home for Winegard. He still remembers the city how it was in the early 90s, including the good and the bad.

Now 91 years old, Winegard has to be guided by his caregiver’s grandson, Emmerison Millbury, Wingard boards the HMCS Sackville along the Halifax waterfront. Eager to share his memories, he points to the bow of the ship.

“I'd be standing up there. But every time you'd go through a big wave it would come up over the gun and hit the bridge right up there."
While gazing at the skyline on the waterfront, he remembers the people he met in the city who made a lasting impression on him.

“The people of Halifax treated us very well,” he says. “Some of the merchants no they took advantage of us because we had nowhere else to go but no one deserved what happened here immediately after the war.”

At the time of his last convoy – before leaving the navy after the war – he toured the East Coast, including former ports of call.
"I don't relive the war but I relive the ship and the spirit of comradery that keeps that ship going,” he says.

After wearing a lot of hats as a professor, university president and federal cabinet minister, Wingard says his greatest passion remains teaching and offering life lessons that are often rooted in his service.

"Do your duty. No excuses. Do your duty.”

http://atlantic.ctvnews.ca/second-world-war-veteran-returns-to-his-former-port-of-call-1.3505155

'Somebody's thinking about these boys': New memorial in German town to honour doomed RCAF bomber crew

Memorial to Lancaster LL687 will mark the spot where bomber fell in 1944, killing 7 Canadian airmen

By Stephen Smith, CBC News Posted: Jul 09, 2017 6:00 AM ET Last Updated: Jul 09, 2017 1:27 PM ET

Audrey Somers has done her best over the last 73 years to put the death of her 23-year-old brother Harold behind her, but it's caught up with her yet again.

At 87, she vividly recalls the moment the telegram arrived at her family's Hamilton, Ont., home, informing her parents that the brother she describes as "loving but quiet" was missing in action over Germany.

"I was upstairs in my bedroom, and my mother came running up and told me," Somers said.

"She kneeled at the side of the bed and said the Lord's Prayer."

"The next day my father's hair turned grey."

Summoning that memory still brings tears today, as Somers talks about the memorial to be unveiled in Germany later this month near the spot where the wreckage of her brother's Royal Canadian Air Force bomber fell to earth after it was hit by anti-aircraft fire in the early hours of July 29, 1944.


Harold 'Hal' Truscott was the mid-upper gunner on Lancaster LL687. He was declared missing in action after the crash, and his body was never found. This photo is from the diary of the crew's only survivor, David Scott. (Craig Scott)

'They were nobodies to anybody else'

The memorial is the result of a 42-year effort by Somers's nephew, Lloyd Truscott, to learn the details of what happened to the crew of the Lancaster bomber nicknamed "Berlin Special" that night during a raid targeting Hamburg.

The Edmonton resident tracked down relatives of his uncle's 408 "Goose" Squadron crewmates in Canada and England, offering them the information he's pulled together on the fate of the plane and its crew.

He's met some, and others didn't care, but Truscott says what matters is he found them.

The crew of "Berlin Special" / Lancaster LL687 EQ-M

Donal Ryan, pilot (Montreal).
Bob Whitson, navigator (Edmonton).
Al Durnin, bomb aimer (Hamilton).
Gordon Croucher, wireless radio operator (Montreal).
David Scott, flight engineer (England).
Jack Imrie, tail gunner (Toronto).
Harold Truscott, mid-upper gunner (Hamilton).
André "Andy" Blais, mid-under gunner (Montreal).*

*Lancaster bombers normally carried a crew of seven, but Blais was added to the mission to make up flight hours he had lost while wounded. His regular crew survived the war.

"I was just trying to locate all these families and give them the information I had, so at least somebody's thinking about all these boys," he said.

"They were just nobodies to anybody else."


Lancaster LL687 was nicknamed 'Berlin Special' by its crew, who flew it on 11 successful missions before it was shot down on July 29, 1944. (Craig Scott)

The photo on the mantel

Truscott says his quest took root in the family silence that always shrouded the death of Harold, who was one of three boys, along with Lloyd's father, Art, and their eldest brother, Claire.

"It was never talked about in the house," he said. "They didn't do that back then, but there was always the picture of my uncle on my grandparents' mantel."

"Whenever I asked about him, it was always, 'He died during the war.'"

All three Truscott brothers served with the RCAF during the Second World War — Art and Harold were bomber crew and Claire flew Typhoons with Fighter Command.

Only Harold didn't make it back.

Lloyd Truscott's curiosity about his uncle's story got the best of him in 1975, when he was living in Ottawa.


The Truscott siblings photographed in 1942. From left to right: Harold, Audrey, Claire and Art. All three brothers joined the RCAF, but only Harold didn't make it back. (courtesy Lloyd Truscott)

Digging through the Department of National Defence archives, Truscott found a few details of the crash, including the tantalizing fact that one of the eight crew members onboard had survived.

His research came to a halt when he sought his Uncle Claire's permission to continue probing Harold's fate.

"My dad said go for it. My aunt said do it. But when I checked with my Uncle Claire, he said no, he didn't want anything done," Truscott said.

"He was the eldest and the first one to join the air force. Harold followed him, and my dad followed him, and he always blamed himself for Harold's death."

David Scott's diary

It wasn't until March 4, 2013, on the anniversary of his father's death, that Lloyd Truscott resumed his search in earnest.

That night, Truscott dug into his old research to see what, if anything, he could find online.

He started with the name of the bomber's Royal Air Force flight engineer David Scott, the only crew member to survive the crash.

The search results left him floored.


The crew of Lancaster LL687 pose for a photo one of 408 'Goose' Squadron's Lancaster bombers.

Among the first hits was the diary Scott had written as a prisoner of war in the months after he bailed out of the burning bomber into the swirling dark over Germany.

Posted online by his son Craig Scott in England in 2007, the diary included an account of the ill-fated mission and photos of his fellow crewmates, including Harold Truscott.

"I was in the basement, and I just screamed to my wife, told her she had to come and see this stuff," Truscott recalls. "It was phenomenal — how he survived all that, the pictures of the crew — that's what really struck me. These are pictures that nobody in my family had ever seen."

Truscott contacted his siblings and phoned his cousin, Audrey's son, to make sure his elderly aunt saw the diary.

"She just sat in front of the computer for hours with tears down her face," Truscott says. "She was only 13 when Harold went away."

Spreckens, Germany

The idea for a memorial grew out of conversations between Truscott, Craig Scott and Jean-Claude Charlebois, a relative of the doomed bomber's wireless operator Gordon Croucher, who Truscott tracked down outside Montreal.

They knew from a postwar forensic investigation conducted by the RAF that five of the crew were pulled from the wreckage and buried in a cemetery in Spreckens, a tiny hamlet 100 kilometres west of Hamburg.


Lloyd Truscott, left, met Jean-Claude Charlebois through his search for family of the crew of Lancaster LL687. Together, they've worked to make the memorial to the crew in Spreckens, Germany, a reality. (courtesy J.C. Charlebois)

Charlebois got in touch with a friendly, English-speaking newspaper publisher in the nearby town of Bremervörde who got reporter Rainer Klöfkorn on the story.

Klöfkorn tracked down Spreckens resident Margret Weiss, who was 11 at the time and remembered the "enormous noise" as the Lancaster hit the ground.

"At first we thought one of the pilots had dropped a bomb," Weiss told Klöfkorn. "Then the adults made their way to the crashed aircraft, and five dead were found in and near the huge crater."

The newspaper story helped forge a bond between the people of Spreckens and the crew members' families, who requested permission to erect a memorial plaque to the Lancaster crew at the same cemetery where five of the Canadians were first buried.


This memorial plaque to the crew of Lancaster LL687 EM-Q will be unveiled July 29 in the cemetery at Spreckens, Germany. (courtesy J.C. Charlebois)

The plaque will be unveiled at a ceremony on July 29, the 73rd anniversary of the crash. Truscott, Scott, Charlebois, and their partners and families will all be there, along with townsfolk from Spreckens.

"To do this memorial, I can't put it into words — it means so much to me," Truscott said. "I know my dad would be really pleased with all this. I'm doing it now for my aunt. She's the last survivor of those siblings."

The bodies of Harold Truscott and Gordon Croucher were never found. Their names are carved on the Air Forces Memorial in Runnymede, England — two of more than 20,000 Commonwealth aircrew from the Second World War who were reported missing and never found.

Audrey Somers said it took her about 20 years to surrender the hope that her brother had somehow survived the crash.

"When you're young, you just imagine that he stayed over there and he's living over there – until you finally realize that he's not coming back," she said.


A photo of Harold Truscott's sister, Audrey Somers, who is now 87. (courtesy Lloyd Truscott)

She's been to Runnymede to see her brother Harold's name. And despite the sad memories it's stirred, she's thankful that a new memorial will honour her brother, his crewmates, and the countless others they represent.

"It's brought back so many memories," Somers said. "But it's not just this boy, my brother, I think about. I think about the thousands and thousands and thousands of boys who lost their lives....They were so, so brave."

"Younger generations have no idea what war is."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/memorial-germany-lancaster-goose-squadron-1.4195080

HMCS Kootenay – the unbearable hardness of memory

By Jeff Mahoney Jul 08, 2017


Along the bow section of Haida, Kootenay veterans: from left, Tom Atkins, John Webster, Dave Stewart, Bill Martell, John Womak and Bill Jefferson. - Gary Yokoyama,The Hamilton Spectator

It was a little after 8 in the morning.

John Webster had just finished his 4 a.m. watch and was settling into toast and coffee in the cafeteria of HMCS Kootenay when, in a single instant, one that threw chaos over the next hours and shadows over lifetimes, he became chained to that day. Oct. 23.

They all did on that ship. Thursday, Oct. 23, 1969. The Kootenay was roaring through full-speed engine power trials in the English Channel. At 8:21 a.m., the starboard gearbox, grossly overheated (1,202 degrees F), exploded, and the explosion flung walls of raging fire and burning oil through the engine room and beyond.

Seven sailors died then and there, two later of injuries. Nine in all, and 53 seriously injured, many more again, less seriously in a crew of about 250. The worst peacetime disaster in the history of the Royal Canadian Navy.

Twenty crew members and several others with a connection to the ship visited Hamilton Thursday to tour HMCS Haida and reunite, as they do more regularly since 2009, when, after four decades, they finally started getting compensation.

They came for the Haida, yes, but as importantly, Doc Homer, retired Hamilton physician, whom many here know from the Parkdale Medical Centre.

"He was our saviour," says crew member Tom Atkins of Doc Homer. Tom, living near Sarnia now, walks with a cane, struggles with PTSD; many of them do. "There have been suicides too," says Tom, who remembers the explosion's immediate aftermath.

"The ship was doing giant circles in the water" at top speed, careening out of control and listing, heat so intense there was a bulge in the iron hull.

Tom was 21 then. John, in the cafeteria, was 19. "I heard a loud bang," John remembers. The sound has also been described as "a rising organ note." "Everything went black, from the smoke of burning oil, and I saw a huge fireball fly past the opening to the cafeteria." He was trapped, in pitch black.

Around 9 a.m., Dr. Joe "Doc" Homer got lowered onto the ship from a helicopter. He'd been flown over from the HMCS Saguenay, a sister ship on the task force fleet that the Kootenay was part of. The Saguenay saw the flare, Kootenay's radio transmission being lost.

Doc tells me, as we stand together in a stillness at the deck rail of the Haida, "I had no idea what I was going into. There was no steering on the ship and it was going full out. (The crew could neither slow down the ship nor in any way control its movement.) Smoke covered it, and we couldn't get to medical supplies or firefighting equipment."

He was the first medical person on the scene. "The first things I saw was this poor kid trying to resuscitate a man already dead."

One survivor from the engine room managed to make it through the passageway to the bridge. "His clothes were burned off him. He had third-degree burns to 50 per cent of his body. His skin was black. He reported, then passed out."

The fire was so hot it melted aluminum ladders. "A sailor sprayed water from a hose at the door to the main magazine (ammunition locker), to keep it cool enough that the high explosives wouldn't ignite." The ship, he says, was like the pictures of Grenfell Tower.

Every man I met at the reunion talked about Doc Homer. Every one, often with moistened eyes. What he did that day, the difference he made, the many he saved, this doctor from North End Hamilton who couldn't afford medical school if not for the navy.

And he would have none of it. "They are the story. I was a visitor on a ship of heroes," he says, not with false modesty, but utter conviction. He talks of sailors who improvised firefighting; others who put on scuba gear, going to the keel to try to get at the fire.

The crew was commended for their bravery, the way they addressed the crisis. Every man I talked to shifted credit onto another. The motto of the Kootenay? "We are as one." John got pulled out of the cafeteria that day, somehow. Doc looked him up and down. "'You're gonna be OK,' he told me," says John, a retired Toronto ... firefighter.

Hugh MacPhee, here from Sydney Mines, N.S., was also trapped. So relieved finally to get to upper deck. But once safely there? "There were dead people around you." His friends.

"Some memories dim," says crew member Art Schwartz, up from Florida for the Haida tour. "That day never gets any dimmer."

The group concluded their tour with a "navy pusser" (shot of rum) and dinner hosted by Friends of the Haida. These incredible men. I can't get them out of my head. The look in their eyes. Even now. Indescribable. They are owed every honour.

https://www.thespec.com/news-story/7412994-mahoney-hmcs-kootenay-the-unbearable-hardness-of-memory/

Ivan Gunter was a little-known hero of Canada’s war effort

BILL ATKINSON
Special to The Globe and Mail
Published Friday, Jun. 30, 2017 5:33PM EDT
Last updated Friday, Jun. 30, 2017 5:33PM EDT

When he was a young soldier, Ivan Gunter’s world-weary expression was captured in a portrait by a renowned war artist, and decades later, when he was a steely-eyed veteran with a chest full of ribbons, he appeared in a national-anthem film sequence that played in movie theatres. He went from military heroism during the Second World War to a low-profile life in rural Ontario, where he toiled at blue-collar jobs and raised a family. Thanks to Mr. Gunter and a million other Canadians like him, this country distinguished itself as a critical player on the world stage. Like the Unknown Soldier, whose tomb symbolizes the many who died, Mr. Gunter’s iconic face became a symbol of those who fought and survived.

Ivan John Gunter, oldest child of Richard and Laura Gunter, was born in the hamlet of Coe Hill, Ont., on Dec. 14, 1920. He was always good-natured: In a sixth-grade school photo, he is the only person smiling. Even in childhood he was not one to be deterred by fear – either in himself or others. When a younger brother refused to jump from a rooftop, Ivan pushed him off and broke his arm.

At the outbreak of the Second World War, Canada incorporated the Hastings and Prince Edward Regiment, known informally as the Hasty P’s, made up of volunteers from two Ontario counties. There was much manpower to draw on: The area was rural and its youngsters had adapted to hardscrabble lives. Their sinewy resilience would make them some of the best soldiers in the world.

Private Gunter enlisted on Oct. 6, 1939, and shipped for England, where he and his unit – including a buddy named Farley Mowat – trained for three years. Pte. Gunter and his friend were in Intelligence Division, which ran reconnaissance and courier missions.

On July 10, 1943, the Hasty P’s landed in Sicily, Italy, to invade what Winston Churchill called “the soft underbelly of Europe.” It proved anything but soft. On the morning of July 18, Pte. Gunter’s regiment came up against roadblocks in Grammichele. Immobilized, they came under heavy fire from German and Italian artillery, including both mortars and the dreaded 88 mm cannon that some Allied soldiers swore could shoot around corners.

Pte. Gunter’s motorcycle was hit and destroyed, leaving him in the ditch but unscathed. Looking up at a nearby hill he saw slight puffs of smoke and sprinted back to regimental fire control to tell them the location of the enemy guns. “I could run in those days,” Pte. Gunter said. “I could also read a map.” He was intercepted by a British officer who upbraided him for bypassing reporting channels. Luckily, General Howard Graham – who had commanded the Hasty P’s until 1942 and was now Commander of the 1st Canadian Infantry Brigade – was nearby.

“Gunter’s right!” the general snapped. “These guys from the north country know what they’re doing.” Within minutes, Canadian artillery had found Pte. Gunter’s co-ordinates and pulverized the Axis guns. The next day, the spit-and-polish officer apologized to Pte. Gunter. Sixty days later, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery pinned the Military Medal on the young soldier’s chest. The medal puzzled him: “I was just doing what I was supposed to be doing,” he said. He was all of 22.

With Sicily pacified, the regiment crossed to Italy and cut north; but as the autumn of 1943 advanced, the weather got ugly. Canadians think of “sunny Italy,” but Naples is at Toronto’s latitude and winter in both countries can be brutal. In early December, 1943, Pte. Gunter’s regiment came to the steep-walled, heavily defended valley of the Moro River, beyond which lay the Adriatic port of Ortona. At the cost of hundreds dead and wounded, the Hasty P’s and their colleagues punched through the German salient and opened the way to the port.

Ortona has acquired near-mythic status. It is like a Second World War Vimy: a critical victory won wholly by Canucks. In December, 1943, Pte. Gunter’s regiment secured the flanks of the Toronto Seaforth Highlanders and the Loyal Edmonton Regiment as they booted the 9th German Paratroops out of a supposedly impregnable position. “We retire undefeated,” a German officer diarized in Ortona in January, 1944. No one told him that victorious troops do not retire.

At this time a Canadian captain strode down a line of infantry inspecting soldiers’ faces. “Him!” the captain said, indicating Pte. Gunter. The officer was the war artist Charles Comfort; his watercolour of Private I.J. Gunter is archived at the Canadian War Museum. In it, Ivan’s face shines like a blade.

By spring of 1944, the Allies had achieved their southern strategic objectives, forcing Italy’s capitulation and tying up more than a dozen German divisions. June 6 brought the Normandy invasion and Pte. Gunter was reassigned to the Netherlands. In the northern war, fought in fields as cold and desolate as those in Italy, the Hasty P’s again distinguished themselves.

On April 14, 1945, Pte. Gunter and his colleagues came under fire. After several couriers could not pass a crossroads onto which German defenders had zeroed their machine guns, Pte. Gunter volunteered to try. He wore a cloth cap with a metal badge because it was more dashing than a steel helmet. At the crossroads, a 10 mm slug struck the cap badge and ricocheted, cutting a groove in Pte. Gunter’s skull. There was no blood; the bullet had cauterized the wound. That ended Pte. Gunter’s war. In July of that year, he was decorated by King George VI for bravery in the field. “The Germans didn’t hurt him,” his wife said later. “They just shot him in the head.”

In 1946, Pte. Gunter brought his English war bride, Irene Crisp, back to Coe Hill. It was culture shock: from a world metropolis to a hamlet. He worked as a hard-rock miner; felled timber; was the Coe Hill postmaster; and coached kids’ sports. He and Irene had three children, six grandchildren, and 14 great-grandchildren. She died in 2011, at the age of 88. Mr. Gunter drove a car until his 94th year and at his 95th birthday party sat smiling as toddlers scaled him, hugged him and boiled around his feet. He contracted pneumonia in March of this year and died on May 28. His ashes were set beside those of his wife in the Coe Hill United Church Cemetery on June 2. It was their 72nd wedding anniversary.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ivan-gunter-was-a-little-known-hero-of-canadas-war-effort/article35525936/

Bomber on Sentimental Journey renews old memories

June 26, 2017


The B17 was used in every theatre of war from 1941 to 1945. Many Canadian airmen crewed aboard B17s and Canada employed six of the planes for transatlantic mail flights.

Troy Shantz

The vintage B17 bomber that visited Sarnia last week took some local veterans down memory lane and into the wild blue yonder.

“I’ve been flying for 55 years, just small planes, but that was different,” said Second World War vet John Percival, who went for a spin on June 19.

“I’ve never experienced anything like this.”


Second World War veteran John Percival exits Sentimental Journey after a brief flight over the city on June 19. Percival has been flying planes since the 1950s, but had never flown in a B17 before. “That was something that I’ll always remember,” he said.

“Sentimental Journey,” built in 1944, is one of only ten B17 bombers still flying. Based in Arizona and part of the Commemorative Air Force, the aircraft offered visitors to Chris Hadfield Airport a glimpse into the tough conditions that its crews experienced.

Percival served in the Royal Canadian Regiment during the war and was part of the force that liberated The Netherlands. He had heard the deep rumbling engines of bombers before.

“We were crossing over … into France and we were laying along the ditch and the sky was black with bombers headed to Germany,” he recalled.

“We saw a lot of them.”

The arrival of Sentimental Journey in Sarnia also coincided with a key moment of the war. On June 24-25 of 1944, the Royal Air Force launched more than 1,000 planes against the Nazis in the conflict’s largest air campaign.

The plane was stationed at Chris Hadfield Airport for a week of flights, events and festivities, including a 1940s-style swing dance and dinner.

Proceeds of the event supported Pathways Health Centre for Children.


Some 13,000 of the planes were produced between 1936 and 1945. Sentimental Journey is one of fewer than 10 still flying.


Sentimental Journey crewmember David Oliver watches as one of its 1,200 horsepower engines roars to life. The vintage bomber can remain in the air for seven and a half hours while consuming 1,400 gallons of fuel.


An aerial view of Sarnia Chris Hadfield Airport reveals the 104-foot winspan of the “Flying Fortress” bomber.

http://thesarniajournal.ca/bomber-on-sentimental-journey-renews-old-memories/

Royal Newfoundland Regiment Museum honours WW II vet

One of Cam Eaton's dying wishes realized with medals donated to museum

By Jeremy Eaton, CBC News Posted: Jun 25, 2017 3:00 PM NT Last Updated: Jun 25, 2017 3:00 PM NT


Cam Eaton walks with then-Princess Elizabeth in downtown St. John's, date unknown. (Eaton Family Archives)

I knew that my great-uncle Cam fought in the Second World War. My grandfather, Doug, talked about it a bit. My dad, Bill, mentioned it a few times, adding more and more details as I got older.

When I was 15, war wasn't something I could fully wrap my mind around. To me, Uncle Cam was a kind fellow who my grandfather looked up to a lot, so I knew he had to have done something incredible to get that admiration.

This week I learned a lot more about the man.

At the tender age of 20, Cam Eaton enlisted to fight for Britain in the Second World War. He was given the service number 970001, making him the second name on the list of the "First Four Hundred" men in the regiment.

First World War vet William John Eaton with daughter Helen Smith, date unknown. (Eaton Family Archives)

After signing up Eaton went home to tell his parents. The news didn't go over well with his father, William John Eaton. The elder Eaton held the regimental number 137 of the First Five Hundred who left Newfoundland for Europe during the First World War. The senior Eaton was in Beaumont-Hamel on July 1, 1916, and was one of the few lucky ones who made it home.

"Dad's oldest sister, Helen, told me one time about when Dad signed up and came home to tell everyone," Cam's daughter Janet O'Dea said.

"I'm sure my grandfather would have been proud of him, but all at the same time devastated. Helen remembers the bathroom door was a little ajar and she saw our grandfather crying on our grandmother's shoulder."


Janet O'Dea, Cam Eaton's older child, talks about her father's wartime experiences. (Gary Locke/CBC)

Soon after he joined, Eaton's group was renamed the 166 Field Artillery in 1941. He served as a forward observation officer, which meant he went ahead of the regiment to see what the Germans were up to.

His son Fraser says his father never talked about much about the war, but he was able to get a few stories out of him.

"I heard more from Dad about the war when his voice was lubricated a little bit with scotch. The time that I heard a couple of stories from him when I was down on the Gander River fishing with him. One story that I recall happened at Monte Cassino," said Fraser Eaton.

"He was up forward of the lines observing the artillery bombarding them. A shell landed in front of him, bounced and landed right on his backside. He told me he laid there for two hours before he had enough nerve to reach around and see if he still had a backside.".


Cam Eaton's son Fraser says his father never talked about the war much to him. (Gary Locke/CBC)

In 1943, while fending off the Germans in Furci, Italy, Eaton had another close encounter.

"He and Harold Lake were right up on the front lines spotting for the artillery and the Germans counterattacked," Fraser Eaton said.

"Dad stayed there, calling in fire closer and closer to himself. Eventually it was only 50 yards away from where he was. He sent Harold Lake back and stayed there and they managed to stop the counterattack. It's my understanding that's why they awarded him the Military Cross."



According to Frank Gogos, chair of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment Museum, only two Newfoundlanders earned Military Crosses during the Second World War.

"In the two artillery units that served in the Second World War there were only two," Gogos said.

"Cam Eaton is one and the other is [Alan] Goodridge. They are extremely rare in that they weren't given out so much in the second war as they were in the first."


Frank Gogos, chair of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment Museum, says few soldiers received the Military Cross. (Jeremy Eaton/CBC)

Eaton earned the rank of captain during the war and then remained active with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment after he returned. Eaton help negotiated benefits for Newfoundland veterans in Canada post-Confederation. He became a successful businessman and a dedicated volunteer, and an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1978.

He also stayed in contact with his fellow members of the 166 and he didn't hold back his devotion to his men.

"When I got engaged we chose a date in late September for our wedding," Cam's daughter Janet O'Dea told me.

"When I called home to tell Mom and Dad it happened to be the same weekend as the 30th reunion of the 166. There was no doubt that my dad, Cam, was not available to walk me down the aisle on that particular weekend. So my date got changed."


Brothers Bill, left, and Cam Eaton pose for a post-war photo in St. John's. (Eaton Family Archives)

Last summer, to honour the dying wish of his grandfather Ron Blake — a fellow member of the 166 and friend of Eaton — Calum Blake flew from Australia to attend the 100th anniversary of the Battle of Beaumont-Hamel.

Blake said that after the war had ended his grandfather made the trek from Australia to Newfoundland a few times and he wanted someone from his family to take part in the event.

"On his deathbed he asked me if I could do the honour and represent him," Callum Blake told me July 1, 2016.

Wearing his late grandfather's medal, he laid a wreath honouring the men of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment.


Calum Blake travelled from Australia to take part in the commemorative ceremonies in St. John's on behalf of his grandfather, who fought with the Royal Newfoundland Regiment. (Darryl Murphy/CBC)

Gordon (Cam) Campbell Eaton died in 1994. A few weeks before he passed away he sat down with Fraser, and gave him some special instructions.

"He wanted all of his memorabilia to be available for a military museum if one ever existed," Fraser told me.

He reached out to the Royal Newfoundland Regiment Museum and offered them up. Back then the museum was located in the old Canadian Forces building and there was no security. Not willing to risk losing his father's hard-earned medals, Eaton had replicas made to sit in the place of the originals until last week.

The museum happily accepted the medals at the Royal Newfoundland Regiment Museum in the William Anthony Paddon building in St. John's.

"Lt.-Col. Campbell Eaton is one of the stalwarts of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment as well as the 166," said Frank Gogos, museum chair.

"He was the first commanding officer of the newly formed 166 field regiment in 1949, and in 1968 he was made the honorary lieutenant-colonel of the Royal Newfoundland Regiment and by 1976 he was made the honorary colonel."

In a special ceremony on Wednesday, surrounded by Eaton's children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, the medals were officially turned over to the museum, fulfilling one of his final wishes.


Cam Eaton's family gathered at the Royal Newfoundland Regiment Museum in St. John's for a special ceremony to hand over the medals. (Jeremy Eaton/CBC)

"He was so attached to that regiment and so proud of the work that they did during the war," O'Dea said.

"The contact after the war remained so strong so the fact that the medals will be there for many of the offspring to see as part of the history that regiment, I think it's really important."

The Royal Newfoundland Regiment Museum has promised the Eaton family that the medals will have a safe and permanent home with them.

"He was immensely proud of what his father did in the First World War and I think very pleased with the way he performed," Fraser said.

"I would never say proud, because that wasn't him. It gives me a great deal of satisfaction that, finally, things will fall into place and that grandfather's medals and dad's medals will be there together. [It's] an Eaton family story which is really unique, and I hope we never see another generation there."

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/cam-eaton-world-war-ii-1.4175248

Ridgeway battle helped launch nation

By Allan Benner, The Standard
Thursday, June 22, 2017 8:27:52 EDT PM


A painting by Toronto artist Alexander von Erichsen of the Battle of Ridgeway in 1866, currently featured in an exhibit at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa called The Fenians � Unintended Fathers of Confederation. Courtesy of Fort Erie Historical Museum

They didn’t stand a chance.

The young soldiers who died in the sweltering heat of battle June, 2, 1866, had no idea their sacrifice would create the impetus needed to forge a nation.

There were 841 untried volunteer members of The Queen’s Own Rifles and the 13th Battalion, armed with muskets.

“They were young university students, pulled out of school,” said Jane Davies, curator at the Fort Erie Museum.

They were up against more than 1,000 battle-hardened veterans of the U.S. Civil War, armed with Gatling guns.

The U.S. veterans, called Fenians, had “really solid plans” as they crossed the border into the British colonies that would become Canada a year later.

The Fenians were a revolutionary group dedicated to the overthrow of British rule in Ireland. It was known as The Fenian Movement, in honour of the Fianna, the ancient Irish warriors.

“This wasn’t a bunch of drunken Irishmen,” said Davies.

The origin of the term Fenian comes from Irish folklore. It described an ancient group of Knights who were self-reliant and had a passion for Irish land.

Times were hard for the Irish, and had been since England took control of the land. In the middle of the 1840s, however, things got much worse. The potato famine of 1845-1848 was a great disaster to the Irish population. In the space of three short years, the inhabitants of the country declined by over two million souls. Some of these two million people immigrated to America while most starved to death or died of disease.

When they made the decision to move onto what would soon become Canadian soil their resolve was clear. Fort Erie historian Earl Plato said the Fenian invasion was intended as a strike against the British.

“There were two million Irish Americans who fought in the American Civil War, most of them in the north,” he said. “The war’s over, they come back home. What the hell do they do?”

He said their hatred of the British led to the attack on the closest British stronghold.

“British North America, that’s us – Upper Canada. Let’s do some damage. They’d hit the Welland Canal if they could, but they never got that far,” said Plato, who used the Battle of Ridgeway as the setting for his 1991 novel Terror at Snake Hill.

“They had lots of plans.”

He said the Fenian leaders thought Irish Canadians would join their ranks against the British, but it didn’t happen.

“They were more Canadian than so-called something else.”

Outmatched and outnumbered, nine British soldiers died that day on a ridge overlooking farm fields of the quiet countryside, in June 1866.

They’re known today as “the Ridgeway Nine,” Davies said. “They died either on the battlefield or within a day because of wounds suffered.”

Dozens more were wounded in the battle, before fleeing the conflict.

And about 26 more died as a result of illness, “mostly because they had to drink water from ditches.”

“They were so parched on that hot, hot day. They marched from Port Colborne here, and then fought in wool uniforms. And they didn’t have provisions,” she said. “They were drinking from the ditches in desperation, which were farm ditches. They got cholera and died.”

Considering the army they were up against, Davies said it could have been much worse.

“It could have been a blood bath.”

But if the defenders had beaten the Fenian raiders during the Battle of Ridgeway, Canadians might not be celebrating the country’s 150th anniversary this year.

The loss of that battle as well as other skirmishes along the U.S border, along with the fear and uncertainty it created, was the catalyst political leaders of the time needed to work together to form a new nation.

Newspaper headlines of the day illustrated the terror the attacks created.

“The headlines hour by hour, each edition would come out with breaking news! You think we’ve got breaking news. This was war!” Davies said.

A few years earlier, political leaders of the day had met to discuss the potential of seceding from British rule. But those discussions didn’t get far.

“They stalled. Of course, to start a new country you’re trying to get every country to agree how this is going to take place,” Davies said.

“But what motivates politicians? Public opinion. Losing the Battle of Ridgeway put the fear in citizens: ‘Hey, you’d better start moving. We need our own defence system. We need our own army. We have to prepare ourselves. We should be a country.’”

The public outcry motivated political leaders to resume discussions about confederation, and little more than a year later, it happened.

Davies has long understood the significance of that battle. Not long after taking the helm of the Fort Erie Museum, she organized a re-enactment of the Battle of Ridgeway to mark its 125th anniversary.

But now, the historic significance of that battle is finally getting the national recognition it deserves.

As the Fenian Raids were taking place in the summer of 1866, Toronto artist Alexander von Erichsen captured the battle and fear that gripped the communities in a series of 23 water colour paintings he created as the Fenian raids were taking place.

For more than a century, those paintings were hidden away in the homes of von Erichsen’s descendants.

Davies said the owners of the paintings were stymied, trying to determine the history of the battle depicted in the paintings.

“There are Civil War uniforms in here, and they were trying to identify it as a Civil War battle,” she said. “They were trying for years, but couldn’t pin it to a Civil War battle.”

They finally discovered the origin of the paintings while reading about the Battle of Ridgeway.

“It was just like light bulbs. As they were reading, they realized these are the paintings.”

In about 1995 – four years after the Davies-organized reenactment of the battle – the owners of the paintings snapped photographs of them and drove to Ridgeway to see if they could identify landmarks captured in the images.

They stopped at the Ontario Travel information centre near the Peace Bridge to ask for directions to the Battle of Ridgeway site. David Owen, a “huge historian,” was working at the information centre that day.

As the painting owners laid these photographs down on the counter, Owen immediately recognized their significance.

“He said, ‘I’m clocking out today. I’m gone,’” Davies said.

Owen accompanied the owners of the paintings to the battlefield site, where they met Davies.

The paintings soon became a cherished part of the Fort Erie Museum’s collection.

While the artist likely relied on his imagination to create some of the images depicting news stories at the time, such as a painting of British soldiers hiding in a barn as a Fenian soldier searches for them, Davies said many of the paintings are too accurate to be created by someone who was not present at the time.

“He had to have walked this ground.”

Gesturing to one of the paintings, Davies pointed out Ridge and Bertie roads, “and that house is still standing,” she said, pointing to a farm house at the intersection.

As precious as those paintings are to the local museum, the originals are no longer on display there.

For the time being, she said those paintings are in their rightful place inspiring people from coast-to-coast.

This summer, as Canadian celebrate the sesquicentennial, the paintings described by Davies as “a visual image of the genesis of our country” are being featured in an exhibit at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa called The Fenians – Unintended Fathers of Confederation.

“They’ll be there until the end of August,” Davies said.

Following that exhibit, the paintings will be returned to Fort Erie – replacing the prints that are currently on display.

“Fort Erie is on the map up there, and that’s in Ottawa,” Plato added.

While Plato, a retired elementary school principal, admits he’s biased about the Battle of Ridgeway, he said he has no doubt that it was the impetus for the birth of Canada.

“I agree with that, but not everyone does. They say, ‘It was just a skirmish.’ Come on,” he said.

“But the point was, we stood up. We arrived. It was a matter of, ‘Hey, this is our land and it’s being invaded.’

“So from Toronto, they came by the hundreds by rail into Port Colborne, and then marched down here to Ridgeway to meet the Fenians,” Plato said.

http://www.stcatharinesstandard.ca/2017/06/22/niagara-closeup-ridgeway-battle-helped-launch-nation

Merchant Navy veteran shares stories of Battle of the Atlantic

Sue Bailey / The Canadian Press

JUNE 8, 2017


Norman Crewe, 95, who served with the Merchant Navy throughout the Battle of the Atlantic, is helped by his wife of 70 years Millie, while putting on his uniform in their home in Halifax this week. Photograph By Darren Calabrese, The Canadian Press

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — Norman Crewe still hears the sound of men crying out from the dark waves of the North Atlantic for help that wouldn’t come in time.

“It stays with you for the rest of your life,” he said. “You’d never forget it if you lived to be 100.”

Crewe, who is 95 now, was among 12,000 men and women who served in Canada’s Merchant Navy during the Battle of the Atlantic.

The pivotal fight between the Allies and Germans for control of crucial shipping supply routes was the longest campaign of the Second World War. It stretched from September 1939 to when the last of the German U-boats surrendered after Victory in Europe Day in May 1945.

Crewe made at least 14 round trips on vessels bound for Britain, carrying everything from eggs to ammunition. He travelled in columns of ships that stayed together for protection against attack from above and below. Enemy aircraft and submarines were constant threats.

If a ship two columns over got torpedoed, the others had to keep going, Crewe recalled.

“You were not allowed to stop.”

Once the rest of the convoy passed, an escort would go back to circle for survivors, he said from his home in Halifax, where he first joined the Merchant Navy in 1940.

To this day, his heart goes out to those doomed men in the water.

“Not only did they drown, but a ship coming up in the same column behind, in the dark … they’d just run over those guys. They wouldn’t know it.”

Crewe resisted telling such stories for decades. But in recent years he has spoken in schools about memories that still fill his eyes and halt his speech.

“I realize now, if we don’t tell the kids what really happened, how are they going to be able to tell somebody else about it?”

Crewe has two great-grandsons who aren’t yet in high school.

“I pray to God the day will never come that they will have to go through what we went through.”

Crewe served mainly on the Lady Rodney, one of five vessels named for the wives of British admirals with ties to the West Indies. It was known before the war in the 1920s and ’30s as a luxury cruise liner.

Crewe’s experience was different. He remembers the time he was most frightened: arriving to board the vessel for a July 1943 trip from Halifax to a British naval base. The ship’s exposed forward decks were chock full of depth charge anti-submarine explosives in full view of enemy planes.

He said by the time they reached their destination a week later, “I could recite the Lord’s Prayer backwards.”

“All we needed was just one to go, and of course it would be like a flash of lightning.”

And then there were storms.

“Anybody that travelled the North Atlantic in the winter time, they went through hell and high water,” Crewe said.

Many times the rails on his bunk kept him from pitching out of bed in vicious weather that turned waves into mountains. He and other young seamen, just kids in their early 20s, were often called out on decks to chip away thick ice that formed as spray froze.

Icebergs were a major hazard in spring.

“The worst was what we called growlers. Those are chunks of ice just above the water,” that can slice a metal hull like a can opener, Crewe said. “Those are very, very dangerous.”

He lost more friends than he can count or name. “Too many.”

Canada’s Merchant Navy had a staggering casualty rate, with more than 1,700 dead and more than 70 Canadian merchant ships sunk.

“I’m one of the lucky ones,” Crewe said. “I came back.”

http://www.timescolonist.com/life/merchant-navy-veteran-shares-stories-of-battle-of-the-atlantic-1.20473290

'If we leave you here, you're going to freeze'

BRUCE DEACHMAN, OTTAWA CITIZEN Published on: June 9, 2017 | Last Updated: June 9, 2017 6:00 AM EDT


William McLachlan. BRUCE DEACHMAN / POSTMEDIA

In anticipation of Canada’s sesquicentennial celebrations, the Citizen’s Bruce Deachman has been out in search of Ottawans — 150 of them — to learn their stories of life and death, hope and love, the uncommon and the everyday. We’ll share one person’s story every day until Canada Day.

“I was part of the team that built the first radar stations in Canada, on the East Coast during the Second World War. People have asked me why we bothered with radar on the east coast of Canada. Germany was so far away. But you never knew when they were going to take a boat, fix it up and bring it over and fire some shells right into Canada. They could have had a whole group of them come over and just take over Canada, the whole country. How did we know? We had no idea.

“I got the basics of radio at Ottawa Tech, and then went to Toronto to do square-bashing — learn how to march — and so on, and then went to Clinton, Ont., which was an RAF station, a very high-security place. We were divided into two groups: one did a six-week course on aircraft radar, and I got on a 12-week course on ground radar.

“When we graduated, in 1942, half of our group was sent to the East Coast and half to the West Coast — about 10 of us went to the East Coast. We installed the first radar station at Preston, N.S. — that was called No. 1., and No. 2 was at Bell Lake, outside of Dartmouth.

“When I say install, we would unload the boxcars and manually haul everything. And after about two weeks we’d have the station together and operating. We slept on the floor, but we didn’t worry about sleeping because we were so tired. We worked from dawn till dark to get the station built: diesel generators, lights, transmitter, receiver, antenna. The stations would detect anything that moved, on the water or in the sky. Once we got that done, a crew would come in to operate it and we would say goodbye.

“We were in Halifax once when our CO said, ‘OK, go and see the paymaster, boys, and get $100 to buy what you’ll need to last a year, because where you’re going there are no stores.’ So we packed all out gear and about 20 of us got on a small Air Force boat, maybe 100 feet long and loaded to the gills with everything, and went up through the Strait of Belle Isle, through the sub-infested Gulf of St. Lawrence, straight up through Newfoundland and Labrador, right up to the top, to a rock there that they call Quirpon Island.

“The other half of us, including myself, went on the Lady Nelson, out of Halifax, on the tail end of a convoy going to Britain, and got off the convoy in St. John’s. We went to the Air Force station where they fed us some cod sandwiches and took us down to the Newfie Bullet, a narrow-gauge railroad. We took that to Botwood, Newfoundland, where there was an airbase. From there we got a boat that took us up to the top of Newfoundland to join the rest of the group. That was in the early part of September, 1942.

“When we got there, there were a couple of tents. That was it. The wind blew all the time and it rained every second day, just to keep us busy. You never changed your clothes and you didn’t have a raincoat; you just did it. This went on till we got some Nissen huts built.

“We ate a lot of hardtack biscuits, and everything was canned: canned fruit, canned butter, canned potatoes. But we ran out of that as time went on.

“There was a Newfoundland Ranger, the equivalent to the RCMP — Nelson Golding was his name — and he would stop in every once in a while to make sure everything was all right. He was always surprised that the German subs hadn’t landed. ‘Are you sure you’re watching them?’ he’d ask.

“But once Christmas came, the ice moved in, so a sub couldn’t land. They were underneath at the time if they were there. So things relaxed — although we still had to know where our rifles were all the time. You always had your rifle with you.

“At Christmas, Nels Golding came to say that Dr. Curtis, who was in charge of the hospital, and the Grenfell Mission in St. Anthony had invited a number of us to go down for Christmas. There were seven of us who were granted that privilege.

“So we walked down. I’m not sure how far it was but they tell me it’s about 35 miles. No roads or anything like that. We started early in the morning, like four o’clock, and get there at maybe 10 o’clock at night, and we were beat.

“The next day most of us didn’t get up until late in the day — Christmas Eve. We went and met Dr. Curtis at the hospital, and then went to the orphanage there and the kids put on a pageant for us. They gave us Christmas dinner and a pageant. And I went to the United Church. No pastor ever came near the radar station, but St. Anthony had a church so I went there on Christmas Day. And then we walked back the 35 miles. I was so tired that I said to one of the guys, ‘I’m going to rest here for a while. I’ll follow you after a while.’ And he said, ‘You’re going to go with us, because if we leave you here, you’re going to freeze, that’s for sure.’

“Anyway, at around the end of June or early July, when the ice moved out, a group came to relieve us, and one of the radar guys said, ‘I hear you’re going to Tusket, N.S. It’s a good station there.’ I said, ‘What are the meals like?’ He said, ‘They’re terrific.’ I said, ‘I’ll buy it.’

“And then he said, ‘You know, there’s a 17-year-old school teacher you should meet in Tusket. She teaches in a one-room schoolhouse. She teaches 10 different grades.’ And I said, ‘Well, there’s a smart kid.’ And to make a story short, we’re going to celebrate our 72nd anniversary on Aug. 27 this year. Phyllis Raynard was her name then.

“I now sell poppies for the Legion at Billing’s Bridge, big time, and I talk to everybody. Everybody knows me at Billing’s Bridge. And I pin poppies on people. There was this one guy once who I was talking to, and I said ‘Where are you from?’ And it turned out he was one or the orphans in St. Anthony and he remembered us going there. And so I’ve kept in touch with him ever since. Owen Ball is his name.”

http://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/capital-voices-if-we-leave-you-here-youre-going-to-freeze

Truth is stranger than fiction. Used to volunteer in a vet ward years ago and came across a survivor of that D79. Fondest memories as we had something in common. I did a stint on the 2nd one, DDH206.
I forget all the other nicknames, but we were called... sag bags.

Long, hard battle became ‘bedrock of Allied victory’

Keeping supply lines open to U.K. laid groundwork for pivotal operations

Sue Bailey / The Canadian Press  June 8, 2017


Archival photo of HMCS Saguenay showing damage from being rammed by a merchant ship, pictured in Halifax.   Photograph By Darren Calabrese, The Canadian Press

ST. JOHN’S, N.L. — At about 4 a.m. on Dec. 1, 1940, three torpedoes streamed through the frigid North Atlantic.

Two missed their target, the destroyer HMCS Saguenay.

The third, fired from the Italian submarine Argo, hit with such force it lifted the ship’s bow and threw able seaman George Borgal of Halifax — just 19 and keeping night watch on the open bridge — up into the air.

“I went flying,” he told author Blake Heathcote years later for the book Testaments of Honour: Personal Histories of Canada’s War Veterans.

“My left leg was numb when I got up and I felt the ship start to roll, back and forth, and I thought she was going to go,” he said. “Our mast was broken and a fire broke out and our bow was gone.”

The Saguenay lost 21 men that night, but managed to steam about 450 kilometres — backward — into port for repairs at Barrow-in-Furness, England.

She was among the hundreds of vessels that braved every kind of weather, from hurricane-force storms to giant seas, as they faced the constant underwater threat of enemy submarines during the Battle of the Atlantic.

Canada played a crucial, largely unsung role in the fight to maintain shipping supply lines to Great Britain, the vital Allied stronghold against German forces advancing across Europe.

The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest and arguably most important campaign of the Second World War. It stretched from the Sept. 3, 1939, sinking of the British passenger liner Athenia off the coast of Ireland until the last German U-boats surrendered after Victory in Europe Day in May 1945.

The United Kingdom relied on constant arrivals from North America of troops, food, fuel, steel, aluminum and everything else needed to power its war machine against the Nazis.

Air travel and transport were still limited, said Marc Milner, author of Battle of the Atlantic and director of the Gregg Centre for the Study of War and Society at University of New Brunswick.

“Britain is an arsenal of democracy, but the stuff’s got to get there by boat,” he said in an interview. “The war cannot be won without winning the Battle of the Atlantic.”

Keeping supply lines open to the United Kingdom laid the ground work for Normandy and other operations that ultimately sealed Allied victory, Milner said.

“The Battle of the Atlantic could not have been won without Canada’s contribution,” he added. “By the winter of 1942-43, fully half of all the escorts on the main routes between North America — New York and Halifax — and British ports are Canadian naval escorts.”

The convoy system in which warships guarded supply-loaded merchant ships from submarine attack was “the bedrock of Allied victory,” Milner said.

Canadians were the quiet administrators — the air traffic controllers of the sea — who kept a complex operation going for much of the conflict.

“Canada was a major player in naval control of shipping and naval intelligence in the Battle of the Atlantic,” Milner said. “We actually ran all of that stuff for all of North America until about the middle of 1942 when the Americans were finally up to speed and were able to take over their own section of the North Atlantic.”

“We’re the people who trained them,” as the U.S. entered the war after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.

The Royal Canadian Air Force also made up about one-third of all aircraft and crew protecting the convoys from above, Milner said.

Former British prime minister Winston Churchill would later write that the Battle of the Atlantic was so pivotal that all other war efforts by land or air depended on its outcome.

“The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril,” he wrote in Their Finest Hour, part of his six-volume history of the Second World War.

Shipping losses reached a startling peak in 1942, raising alarms that Britain might not be able to import the yearly requirement of 25 to 30 million tonnes of food, raw materials, oil and other goods, Milner said.

Canadians stepped up as support staff to keep goods flowing at a time when the Royal Canadian Navy was still a comparatively fledgling force, he said.

“We did a lot with armed yachts and old trawlers and anything that would go,” he said. “It allowed the British in particular to get really good at what they were doing, which was killing submarines.”

The Royal Canadian Navy grew in that period from 10 modern warships and 3,276 personnel to 400 warships and almost 100,000 members. By 1945, it was the world’s fourth largest navy.

It was one motley crew in the war’s earliest stages, Milner said. Canadian corvette commanders were often former reservists or merchant seamen called to service — including a fair number of ex-liquor movers.

“And then there were people from the marine service of the RCMP who’d spent much of the ’30s chasing them while they were running rum around the East Coast.

“You had this curious navy made up of characters on both sides of the law who were then out fighting Germans.”

Milner hails those Merchant Navy sailors as true heroes who, despite high casualty rates, had to fight decades after the war for official recognition and veteran benefits.

He also specially mentions the corvette commanders and merchant vessel captains who worked relentless schedules under punishing stress. Many senior officers did not survive long after the war, he said.

They were men like Chummy Prentice, captain of the corvette HMCS Chambly who helped log the Royal Canadian Navy’s first sinking of a U-boat in September 1941.

Prentice sported a monocle and didn’t bat an eye when his whole crew turned up one day with their own eye pieces, Milner said.

“It’s said that Prentice threw his head back, flipped the monocle in the air, caught it between his eyelid and his cheek and said: ‘When you can do that, you can all wear monocles.”’

George Borgal, the son and namesake of that young watchman who survived the 1940 torpedo attack on the Saguenay, also marvels at the endurance of those crews.

“He would have nightmares,” he said of his father, who lived through other close calls at sea, including a ramming with another vessel and a hurricane.

“You have to admire the strength of character of people who go through that.”

Borgal is now head of a working group with the Canadian Naval Memorial Trust aimed at building Battle of the Atlantic Place. It would be a new museum in Halifax showcasing HMCS Sackville — a surviving corvette — and Canada’s role in the campaign.

“Without the battle having been won, Normandy wouldn’t have happened, the relief of Stalingrad wouldn’t have happened and the course of our future would have looked very different,” Borgal said

Every year on the first Sunday of May, Canada’s naval forces honour those lost at sea during the Second World War. They pause, pray and remember the legacy of the Battle of the Atlantic as they pledge themselves anew: “Ready, aye, ready.”

http://www.timescolonist.com/life/canada-150-long-hard-battle-became-bedrock-of-allied-victory-1.20473285

Former resident of Sundridge was a secret Second World War hero

By Brendan Kyle Jure Jun 05, 2017


Rebecca White - Peter Brimacombe and Steven White/Courtesy

Imagine sitting in a shack in the middle of a cow pasture trying to decode Nazi transmissions. That’s exactly what Becky White did.

Located just outside of Ottawa, the Number 1 Station HMCS Bytown, known as HMCS Gloucester after the war years, was home to the Sundridge native during 1943-45.

The British High Commission gave White, now 93, the Bletchley Park Commemorative Badge in honour of her service with the Signals Intelligence on Sept. 1, 2016 at the Rideau Veterans’ Health Centre in Ottawa, where she currently resides.

Born Mary Rebecca Brimacombe in 1923, she was raised on a farm outside of Sundridge with her two brothers and sister.

“The farm was a pretty big farm and they hired a few people and owned a lot of the lakeshore property,” said one of White’s three sons, Peter.

White attended high school in Burk’s Falls before enlisting in the Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service in 1943.

The station and the people stationed there were vital during the late stages of the war. White and her peers used radio equipment to determine the locations of German U-boats in the North Atlantic by intercepting Morse code transmissions.

The U-boats focused on blockading ports and commerce raiding, trying to disrupt the Allied war economy, targeting merchant navy convoys. They were heavily involved in the Battle of the Atlantic during the Second World War, due to the limitations imposed by the Treaty of Versailles on the German military,

Members of the Women Royal Canadian Naval Service stationed there would go through basic training in Galt, Ont. Soon afterwards, they found themselves shipped to HMCS Bytown, a four-building compound. The largest was the barracks, shaped as a large ‘U’. It held the accommodation cabins, sick bay, the lounges, the mess hall and the office quarters.

The second was the Operations Building, where all the magic would happen. This is where the service would spend all their time intercepting radio traffic. The third building was the garage.

https://www.northbaynipissing.com/community-story/7350326-former-resident-of-sundridge-was-a-secret-second-world-war-hero/

Area soldiers served in Canada's military during WWI

Glimpse of the Past

By Marlin Peterson May 27, 2017

Kasota native enlisted in 1915



Each year on Memorial Day, American Legion Post 389 places two countries' flags — the United States and Canada — on the grave of World War I veteran Abraham P. Harder.

Harder was one of several dozen soldiers from the area who wore the uniform of the Canadian army during The Great War.

The United States entered war in support of the Allied Powers April 6, 1917; however, thousands of Americans in uniform already were serving in Europe.

During World War I, the majority of the soldiers of the British Empire came from England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, India and Canada. Of the 619,636 soldiers of the Canadian army, an estimated 40,000 had been enlisted by recruiting stations set up around the United States. U.S. residents also had traveled to Canada to enlist.

Some of these men were Canadian or British subjects but at least 35,612 were American citizens by birth.

Because swearing allegiance to a foreign government — and in particular bearing arms — could result in a loss of citizenship, many hid their American citizenship from the Canadian recruiters, who in turn did not press the issue.

These Americans served for a variety of reasons. Some had been born in Canada and had family connections there or had relatives serving in the war.

Many Americans were angered by the 1914 invasion of neutral Belgium by the German armies attacking France. They felt the United States should help defend France, which had been its staunch ally during the American Revolution.

When 124 American lives were lost when a German submarine torpedoed and sank the British passenger ship Lusitania May 7, 1915, many were outraged by the lack of action by President Woodrow Wilson and his seemingly pacifist views in general.

Then, as in every war, there were those who joined up for glory and adventure.

In the 1920 book "Blue Earth County in the World War" 16 men from the county are listed as serving in the Canadian Army. Further research reveals more than a dozen others from the surrounding counties. Most counties across southern Minnesota likewise had soldiers in the Canadian army.

Canadian military archives include recruiting forms called Attestation Papers, which reveal details about many of these men. The earliest area enlistee appeared to be Leslie W. Parsons from St. Peter.

Parsons was born in Kasota in 1893 and enlisted Feb. 5, 1915, six months after the war began. He spent 26 months at the front, at Cambrai, Ypres and Verdun, and was gassed once and wounded several times.

The earliest Blue Earth County man to die in the war was Alfred Johnson of Madison Lake. He was killed in action May 17, 1917, while fighting in the Canadian 4th Division. He is buried in France. Another man Thomas O'Connor died of disease.

Nicollet County records indicate two deaths. Arthur Clouston fought in the Canadian 7th Division and was killed in action at Messines Ridge Nov. 10, 1917, and Maurice Wheeler of North Mankato, a Canadian native, died of pneumonia Nov. 30, 1918. Wheeler died several weeks after the armistice and is buried in Janval Cemetery, Dieppe, France.

Wheeler's family home is at 348 Wheeler Ave. He moved there after spending four years in the U.S. Army.

A Scottish ancestry appears to have been a compelling reason Wheeler enlisted north of the border to fight in Europe. Initially, his enlistment was in the Canadian 48th Highland Infantry, which was attached to the famed Gordon Highlanders from Scotland.

Wheeler wore the jaunty "tam o' shanter" cap of a Scottish soldier and collar insignia instead of the regulation British Army uniform trousers. The highland regiments often wore their kilts in battle and were dubbed by the Germans as Die Damen aus der Holleb (The Ladies from Hell).

At some point, Wheeler was transferred to a cavalry unit from Winnipeg, Ontario. A newspaper obituary and military grave information list him as serving in the Fort Garry Horse unit.

Several of these soldiers who survived the war are buried locally. Thomas Oglesby's grave is in Calvary Cemetery, Mankato, and Alfred Bate's is in Lake Crystal Cemetery.

Bate was born in London. He was engaged in an auto business in Lake Crystal. He enlisted quite late in the war — Sept. 12,1918.

During the war, the Allies had sent thousands of tons of supplies to Vladivostok on the Russian coast of the Pacific Ocean. The supplies were to be shipped via the Trans-Siberian Railroad to support the Russian army fighting the Germans and Austrians on the Eastern Front. Pvt. Bate was among 1,500 Canadian soldiers guarding those supplies, along with thousands of soldiers from Britain, France, Italy, Japan and United States.

Luther V. Stone, of St. Peter, was too old to join the U.S. Army but he wanted to serve in The Great War. He was the brother of a prominent attorney Marshall Stone — they had relatives living in Canada.

He traveled to Winnipeg, where he joined the Canadian Army just three days before his 45th birthday.

The pride Stone felt in his service is reflected on the family monument at Woodlawn Cemetery just across the river from St. Peter in Le Sueur County. The inscription reads, "L.V. STONE CANADA E.F. WORLD WAR I." The initials E.F. stand for Expeditionary Force.

The Canadian Army fought with distinction in the war. Four American members were awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain's equivalent to the U.S. military's Medal of Honor.

Although many of the men would have had service obligations in the U.S. Army when war was declared in April 1917, the majority of them stayed with their fellow Canadians. Their decisions were in agreement of the U.S. government. Due to their numbers, no loss of citizenship or legal action was ever contemplated against them. By 1920, they were welcomed back as citizens in good standing.

About 2,700 Americans died in the Canadian service — about 500 in Canada and the rest overseas. Although the dead were allowed to be interred in American Battle Monuments Commission cemeteries, Canadian policy dictated they remain in Commonwealth War Grave Commission cemeteries.

Of the 477 Canadian graves in one cemetery in Belgium, 45 were American citizens or their records show a next of kin, parents or a wife with an address in the United States.

Marlin Peterson of Kasota is a military history buff with a special interest in World War I veterans.

http://www.mankatofreepress.com/area-soldiers-served-in-canada-s-military-during-wwi/article_a538037e-4243-11e7-b3ba-2f5ba20b22f8.html