by Charlie Tatham Wash the apples, put them in the cider press, grind them up, press the apple pulp and then you have sweet apple cider. Hughie Hardwick, a neighbourhood lad, helped my father make cider. He was killed in action on August 10, 1944. He was with the Algonquin Regiment.
Alfie Childs’ folks were playing cards when the telegram came—killed in action, Saturday, October 11, 1941. He was a great high school football player.
Reading the local newspaper, I read that a good friend, Bill Stone, training as an air gunner, was killed on February 5, 1944. He was in a Wellington; the port engine failed and his aircraft crashed and burned.
Jim Kenny and I used to flip for cokes, flip to see what show to go to. Jim joined the navy. He was with the Royal Canadian Navy 29th motor torpedo boat flotilla. He was killed on February 14, 1945, in a fire and explosion at Ostend, Belgium. He was 20 years old.
‘Jenk’ Jenkins’ locker was being cleaned out and his personal belongings sent to his parents. We were stationed at Number 1 Service Flying Training School Camp Borden in the winter of 1943/1944. Jenk and his instructor, flying a Harvard, crashed and both were killed.
Sometimes youthful exuberance got in the way of common sense. Tommy Thompson, a drogue pilot at Number 10 Bombing and Gunnery School, offered to fly a recent west coast arrival a flip over eastern water. They were never seen again. The last time seen, Tommy was low flying, wave hopping. He must have caught a wave.
Did the failure at Dieppe contribute in itself to the success of the Normandy landing in June 1944? When the Canadians re-entered Dieppe in September 1944 one of the first tasks assigned was the painting of the plain wooden crosses that mark 855 graves in the Canadian cemetery.
Tommy Wardell, a school friend, joined the Royal Rifles of Canada in the winter of 1940/1941 and went to Hong Kong. He spent the rest of the war in a Japanese mine. Of the 1,975 Canadians who sailed from Vancouver on that October night in 1941, 555 never returned. Nearly half of the number died in prison camp.
Ask the lads who were on Atlantic convoy duty—ask Jim Steele about the run to Murmansk.
Some statistics: Between March 5 and June 24, 1943, the fledgling RCAF Canadian group lost over 100 crews, a wastage which meant that only 12 of every 100 crews commencing a 30-mission tour could expect to survive it.
The years have hurried by, memories fade, but still you will hear some of the songs of Vera Lynn—
“White Cliffs of Dover,” “We’ll Meet Again,” “I’ll Walk Alone,” “A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square,”—and remember Gracie Field’s “Now is the Hour.”
D-Day, VE day, VJ day.
Will we ever learn?
Remember our comrades.
Comrade Charlie Tatham retired to Powell River in 1997 after 72 years in Southwestern Ontario. He is the former mayor of Woodstock, Ontario.
