Big love today to English-born Mrs Grace Feldman of Glace Bay, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia and her carpenter husband Morris (born in Ukraine), who had to watch their four eager sons go off to the Second World War.
Electrician Arthur (below) had volunteered aged 18 in 1940 for the Royal Canadian Navy, and, by 1944, he’d been made Petty Officer in charge of the Asdic equipment on HMCS Columbia. We know Asdic equipment as sonar today; it had been developed to detect enemy U-boats.
The Asdic set was a large, bulky bit of kit and Arthur, on 25th February 1944, would come to know just how weighty it was when, in heavy fog and labouring under faulty radar readings, his ship accidentally rammed the cliffs in Newfoundland’s Motion Bay.
The impact shook the Asdic set free and it fell to trap its operator, 21 year old Arthur, between the set and the bulkhead.
They tried desperately to get him free but he had sustained grievous crush injuries.
The story is told in a very kind letter, written to his Mum Grace by Arthur’s Commanding Officer several weeks later.
“Arthur… was as fine a young man as I have ever encountered in my experience at sea, which represents a good many years in command of ships and various types of men.
He was most efficient in and keen about his job, was intensely loyal and was loved by all his shipmates.
His death, while carrying out his duties in an exposed position during a crisis, was one of which you may well be very proud, as indeed we all are aboard.
His end was very peaceful. The Surgeon Lt-Commander was with him from the time of the accident, and he did not suffer.
His thoughts were not for himself, but for his shipmates, whom he thought were endangering themselves in trying to save him.”
When Grace read this letter, her three other sons were all serving abroad: John was with the Canadian Army in Italy, Horace was a Flight Sergeant with the RAF in India and Harold was with the Canadian Artillery, training in England, though he would soon transfer to the infantry.
She must have held her breath with every knock at the door at home in Glace Bay.
And a year almost to the day after Arthur’s CO wrote his letter of sympathy, the dreaded knock came again.
Arthur’s older brother, 27 year old Harold (below), had been shot and killed by a sniper while serving with the Canadian Army’s Algonquin Regiment as part of the herculean effort to liberate the Netherlands.
He is buried in Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery where he is, I’m certain, very well cared-for by the local Dutch residents.
The boys’ High School yearbook published a memorial edition in 1947. Harold’s entry reads: “As a student of Glace Bay High, he was very popular with his associates, having in a high degree those qualities of honesty and straightforwardness that win the respect of all.”
Dear Mr & Mrs Feldman, you raised your boys to be kind and honourable men, and they are Not Forgotten.
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