Remembrance Day has always been very emotional for me as both my father and my uncle served in the Second World War and then spent the rest of their lives in the military. In the 50's when I was quite young, my family lived in Germany as part of the Occupation forces. At that time bomb damaged houses and apartment buildings gaped eerily at us as we walked the streets of our small German town; gigantic hunks of concrete reinforced with rusting metal rods that had been Siegfried Line bunkers were scattered across the fields where we children played; my family took me to 'visit' Dachau before it had been prettied up for tourists. I thus grew up with a very vivid realization of the horrors caused by war.
Both my father and his brother have passed on but I have very strong memories of them as both proud military men and warm family members. But I have always been haunted by vague family references to 'Uncle Charley' who died in World War I. None of the family could offer me any specific details of where Uncle Charley served or more importantly where, when and how he died. So although I have spent many years of my adult life in Europe and have visited several of the Canadian gravesites in France I knew nothing about this distant family member or where to look for his grave.
On the morning of November 11th I was watching the Ottawa ceremonies and heard reference to a website where the records of Canada’s WWI soldiers were all available free of charge. I immediately logged on and despite the fact that I knew only his name and probable hometown and that our family name is not uncommon I was able to locate his records almost immediately. I was amazed to see his ‘Attestation’ papers – the form he had filled out when he signed up – written in his own hand. I learned that he was 50 years less a day older that me. I then uncovered the official report of his death giving the date and place as well as the number of other young men in his unit who died in the same trench. Lastly, I found a record of exactly where his grave is located. Most touching of all were notations in several different hands naming the cemetery, the closest villages and the row and number of his plot. It was comforting to know that unknown Canadians had taken an interest in identifying the precise location of his final resting place.
As I closed down my computer I felt so moved; Uncle Charley, who for so many years had been just an empty name, had now become a flesh and blood person. I made a Remembrance Day vow to be the first family member in 95 years to visit Uncle Charley's lonely grave.
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