For hundreds of thousands of families around the world, 1945 marked the first happy Christmas celebrated together after the sad and lonely years of war. After the war ended in May 1945, it took months to transport all those men and women home again, and some didn’t arrive until just before Christmas. My own father, who […]
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Violet Milstead of Toronto was a ferry pilot, one of the elite few Canadian women who served with the Air Transport Auxiliary in Great Britain during the Second World War. She flew forty-seven different types of aircraft, including fighters and bombers, from factories to airfields. My guest post about Vi Milstead was prepared by the official historian […]
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Thousands of our furry and feathered friends performed valuable work during the war, while others simply provided love and comfort to servicemen while they were far from home, diverting their minds from the horrors of war. Beginning with one of the cutest photographs in history, Corporal Edward Burckhardt poses with the kitten that he said “captured” him on the […]
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My admiration is boundless when it comes to the Canadian nurses who bravely carried out their grim duties in wartime – so it was an honour to interview Jessie Middleton of Abbotsford, British Columbia. I was especially keen to meet Jessie because my column has not paid enough attention to nurses – our Canadian women in uniform who were the […]
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Jack Dye, a brave young Halifax bomb-aimer from Regina, Saskatchewan, saved everyone on his bomber in this terrifying incident that took place on June 3, 1944 — 71 years ago today. Readers often send me stories of their own. This one is from Nancy Cuelenaere of Edmonton, Alberta, who sent me this story about her brave […]
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Of all the connections made through Wartime Wednesdays, this is the most wonderful. Hank Herzberg of Chicago, aged 95, learned at last what had happened to his boyhood friend from Hanover, Germany, by reading my post called The German Jew Who Bombed Berlin. And his own story is also extraordinary! First, the Georg Hein Story The […]
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This week marks the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, so I’m updating a post that I wrote last year. The Scheffer family hid a Jewish couple for two years in their home in a small town in Holland, saving them from certain death. The Scheffers had six children of their own. If […]
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I saved this topic for Christmas Eve, simply because it is so inspirational. The rebuilding of the bombed Church of Our Lady in Dresden, Germany, is a heart-warming example of renewal and redemption. Please look at the before and after pictures to see what I mean. I don’t want to discuss the controversy surrounding the bombing of Dresden, Germany, which took […]
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Imagine saying goodbye to your husband or son, knowing that you will not see his face or hear his voice for years — maybe forever. That’s why mail was absolutely critical during wartime, both for the boys over there and the folks back home. And never more so than at Christmas. I assume the RCAF pilot […]
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My mother-in-law Gerda Drews was a teenager living in Berlin during World War Two. In this interview, she describes her family’s tragic experiences after the battle of Berlin, when her city fell to the Soviet Army in May 1945. Note from Elinor: My husband was born in Berlin after the war and emigrated to Canada as a young […]
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