Month: November 2010

What’s this blog all about…?

I started writing this blog so I could find people who could have known people who knew my wife’s uncle.

This was my first article…

Click here.

Many people wrote me and shared information and pictures.

Every time I would ask permission to post them. I only share what people permit me to do.

If you have been reading this blog from the start, you know my wife’s uncle did not want to talk much about his ordeal. So I bought the book The Unlucky Lady written by Émile Beaudoin. In the book there is a list of sailors who took part in that fateful mission on April 29, 1944.

Pierre Bachant’s name is not in the book. I can’t find any trace of him in the book.

But he has given me enough information to believe that what he said was true.

One of these things was that he recognised Thin in this picture…

Thin is in the middle of picture between the two guns. He is all but thin.

Dorothy wrote me last week. She recognised another sailor. She said his name was Jack Edwards. He was from Edmonton, Alberta.

Dorothy shared some information with me and even though I had a hard time figuring out who he was refering to in this picture, Dorothy and I had fun exchanging e-mails back and forth to find Jack.

Right, left, port, starboard… I was all confused. At least I knew who Thin was.

Jack is listed in the book under the name John. There is another Edwards in the crew. His name was Lloyd Edwards. He was from Ontario.

I believe it’s him…

Click to zoom in

What’s this blog all about…?

I think you know the answer.

By the way, are you related to Thin?

Able Seaman Jack Edwards

I got this comment about an article I wrote last year.

One sailor in the thin photo is a neighbor’s son. His name is Jack Edwards- he was picked up by an American destroyer three days after the sinking. I was a child of eight years old, and his sister was my best friend. A telegram came saying lost at sea, then two weeks later another telegram came saying he was in a New York Hospital
He is the sailor next to the second gun, to the right with a tilted hat, and a grin on his face.

He passed away in 2002, in Edmonton, Alberta.

I wrote about Thin, a sailor my wife’s uncle had identified.

Click here to read this article…

Someone has identified another sailor in this picture…

 

This is Able Seaman Jack Edwards…

Murchison

This comment was left an article I wrote some time ago about a sailor who was on board HMCS Athabaskan.

June Taylor is my sister. 

She passed away in March 2010. 

Murchison, as he was known by his family, is my Uncle also, although I never knew him.  I grew up hearing about him and seeing the many pictures that were, and are, treasured by his family. He was my sister’s and brother’s favourite Uncle, and they never forgot him, or stopped missing him.  He was my mother’s beloved younger brother, and until her death at age 96 in 2007, she remembered, cherished, and still missed him.  He was/is talked about often, and normally his memory brings smiles to everyone, however; sometimes, my mother’s eyes would fill with tears, and as she quietly wept, you could hear her murmur ‘my dear brother’.

I did not want this comment to be lost in cyberspace…

You have to read the article I wrote to fully understand.

Click here to read this article 

Lest We Forget