more wartime memories

I'm grateful to Bob Schimmell for this outline of Ed's wartime chronology - I knew of most of its parts but did not have the sequence of events clear.

Bob Shimmell reporting in. I was a Radar Mech with your Dad starting in May 1941, getting on the train at Hamilton, bound for Yarmouth N.S.. I went to UNB in Fredericton, while Ed went to another University in the Maritines. We went Overseas in the same convoy, and went to different Radar School in the U.K. We met up again at Gibraltar in 1942. Both on RAF Coastal Command Squadrons, Ed on 48 Sqdn and I on 233 Sqdn, sharing the same runway, half-mile-square Airfield, and similar deplorable living conditions. One bright light -- I joined up with the 2 "Reds", and two Canadian Radar Mechs from 79 Sqdn., I think, and we won the Basketball Championship of Gibraltar!!!!!
Our squadrons returned to U.K. and switched to Transport Command for the coming D-Day invasion. We were located in almost adjacent Airfields and when Canada decided to have its own Transport squadron, those of us who had been at Gib applied for relocation to 437 RCAF Squadron , and were accepted.
We spent the final 12 months of the War and our overseas service together. We had a great and congenial time under those conditions. Ed and I were good pals, even going out on double-dates with WAAFs, and the odd low-budget pub-crawl. (We weren't all that great as drinkers). Ed, Lofty Goodmanson and I were the three Flight Corporals, looking after about 33 Dakotas (with help from LAC Radar Mechs). We came home on the same Convoy--------------- after a few years of getting our separate lives straightened out, I located Ed up at Lively, and have kept in touch ever since. So, that's my introduction.

Ed was a great guy, and I wish to submit my most sincere condolences to Jean, Connie, You, and the grandchildren etc., etc. Ed obviously made his presence felt in the religious, and other, commmunities in the Sudbury area.

I will miss Ed because he is so wrapped up my memories of WWII, and the people I met under sometimes adverse conditions. There aren't very many of us left. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.