Signalman Raymond (Ray) William Culley was born in Calgary, Alberta, on June 27, 1925. In early 1943 he joined the Royal Canadian Naval Volunteer Reserve. He served on the corvette HMCS Summerside until his demobilization at the end of World War II.

The collection’s only letter was written by Ray Culley while his ship was in harbour at Milford, Haven, Wales. He had just received news from his mother telling him that his younger brother Donald (Don) was thinking about joining the Navy, and as their father was away with the Army in Sicily, Ray was writing to advise Don that he was likely needed more at home with their mother. But shortly after he finished writing Ray was handed a telegram sent by his uncle with two messages: that his brother Don had been fatally injured in an accident at home; and that his father was in an Army Hospital in Birmingham. The letter to his brother was never mailed.

In 2003 Ray Culley published a book of memoirs of his time in the navy, titled His Memory Can Survive. The book was dedicated to his brother Don.

 External links:
Sig. Culley’s Military Service Record is not open for public access at this time.
A review of the book His Memory Can Survive can be read in the Canadian Naval Review, Spring 2005, p. 33.

Able Seaman Bill R. Curtis served with the Royal Canadian Navy during WWII. While stationed in England he served aboard a Landing Craft Infantry vessel, HMCS LCI(L)-285. In 1944 he returned to Canada where he served on a Boom Defense Vessel, HMCS BDV 19, in Esquimalt, British Columbia.

Collection notes:
The letters in the collection were all written by Curtis to his sweetheart Miss Audrey Addison of Nanaimo, B.C., between January 1943 and November 1944.
Transcriptions of the postcards have been included in the letter section. Due to funding constraints, only twenty-five letters have been transcribed at this time.
[Collection update August 2023: Thirty-five new letters added (as jpgs only).]

External Links:
A/B Bill Curtis (Serv/Reg# V69246) survived the war; his service record is not open to public access at this time.

Corporal Eunice Frances Davies was born in 1917, to parents Frank Lewis and Eunice Eleanor Davies of Springside, Saskatchewan. She had four older brothers, Edward Frank, Arthur Lewis, Leonard Gordon, and Leslie John Davies.

Davies enlisted with the Royal Canadian Air Force (Women’s Division) in 1942. In 1943 she married R.C.A.F. Pilot Officer (then Corporal) Hugh Alexander Adams, who was later killed in action on July 29, 1944. Davies was discharged from service on January 14, 1945.

Davies and her family suffered a continual succession of losses during the war years. Her brother Pte. Leslie John Davies, who had enlisted in 1940 with the 16/22 Saskatchewan Horse, died less than six months later of complications following influenza on January 15, 1941. Eunice’s mother passed away the following year, in May of 1942. On July 29, 1944, came the notice that her husband Pilot Officer Hugh Alexander Adams, 428 Sqdn. R.C.A.F., was missing in action. The following spring, Eunice’s brother Corporal Leonard Gordon Davies, 8th Recce. Regt. (14th Canadian Hussars), was killed in action in Holland on April 9, 1945.  A few weeks after Leonard’s death came the news confirming her husband, P/O Adams, was no longer considered missing in action, but instead as killed in action.

Content notes:
Letters were written by Eunice Davies (some under her married name as Mrs. E.F. Adams) to her friend Eira Williams in Regina, Saskatchewan. Other letters written to Eira Williams can be found in the CLIP Collections of Wren Margaret Helen Chesney, L.A.W. Jean Isabel Turner and P/O Lloyd Wesley Cuming.

External links:
Cpl. Eunice Frances Davies’ service record (Serv/Reg# W304889) is not publicly available from Library and Archives Canada at this time.

P/O Hugh Alexander Adams’ service record (Serv/Reg# J87993) can be viewed/downloaded in pdf format through Library and Archives Canada. [Note of April 2023: the L&AC internal link to the pdf of P/O Adams’ file is broken at this time.]
Lt. Leonard Gordon Davies’ service record (Serv/Reg# L53545) can be viewed/downloaded in pdf format through Library and Archives Canada.
Pte. Leslie John Davies’ service record (Serv/Reg# L36816) can be viewed/downloaded in pdf format through Library and Archives Canada.

Warrant Officer 2^nd Class Arnold F.A. Dawkins of Victoria, British Columbia, served in the Royal Canadian Air Force during World War II. He was stationed at a base at Tempsford, England, working as an air observer when his plane was shot down over France on February 19, 1943.

After a brief attempt to evade capture following the plane crash, Dawkins was apprehended by the Germans as a Prisoner of War (P.O.W.) and soon interred at the Stalag VIII-B/344 camp at Lamsdorf (present day Łambinowice) in Poland. In the closing weeks of the war he was among the many tens of thousands in the forced marches of P.O.W.s out of Poland and across Germany ahead of the advancing Russian front. He was finally liberated by the arrival of American troops on April 12, 1945, arriving safely back in England four days later.

Dawkins began keeping a diary in April of 1942 while in training in England and continued throughout the war, even during much of his time in captivity, until July of 1945. Following the war the diary was put away until the spring of 1993 when Dawkins read it again for the first time since 1945. At that time he made some minor revisions, explaining that the “writing was so small that I had the pages enlarged and typed. Abbreviations were written out in full, expressions not suitable for family reading were removed. The rest is the way I wrote it.” The diary posted here is of the document he created at that time. Extensive descriptive/explanatory notes were added by Dawkins to the entries related to the time of his capture and the two weeks immediately following it, from Feb. 19, 1943, to March 3, 1943. These have been included here with the diary entries of February 1943. Notes were also added by Dawkins following the Mar. 26, 1943, entry relating to the historical context of the Lamsdorf P.O.W. Camp and of post-Dieppe reprisals. Other minor annotations throughout were likely made during the diary transcription by Dawkins (e.g. the entry of dates June 6-17, 1942: “no entry, probably visiting relatives in North Ireland”).

Note on place names: When recording location information in his diary entries during the forced march of 1945 Dawkins often used the place names he saw on the roadside signs they passed, and these may differ from present day place names. 

External links:
W.O. Dawkins’ Service Record (Serv/Reg# R87686, P.O.W.# 27710) is not yet publicly available.
The RCAF Association provides a list of RCAF airmen taken P.O.W. from September, 1939 to the end of December, 1944, which includes Dawkins as well as some of the other P.O.W.’s mentioned in his diary.

Mm. Marie-Louise Depreaux was an American born woman who lived in Paris with her French husband, Albert Depreaux, during the German Occupation. The collection consists of an ongoing letter written to her two sisters to relate to them the details of her life during that time, written between August, 1940 and September, 1944. The spelling in the original has been retained as closely as possible in the transcription.

Fred Dillon served during WWII with No. 7 Canadian Light Field Ambulance, Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps (R.C.A.M.C.), a mobile medical unit that served in the European Theatre in support of the 5th Canadian Armoured Division, 1st Canadian Corps. The R.C.A.M.C.’s Field Ambulance units operated in close proximity to active combat areas, and were responsible for providing medical aid and evacuation of the wounded. Dillon returned safely to Canada following the end of the war.

Content notes:
Collection materials were donated directly from the Netherlands, by a family that Dillon had stayed with while stationed in Groningen, Holland. Among the photographs are two unit-type pictures of the No. 7 Can. Lt. Fld. Amb. taken in 1945 (based on unit history for Groningen, presumably between April 22 and May 22). The photographs and message written by No. 7’s “Bill Hutt” are those of acclaimed Shakespearian actor William Ian DeWitt Hutt, CC, OOnt, MM. The collection also contains a programme for the 5th Canadian Division’s travelling show “Hold Your Hat.”

External links:
[rank unknown] Fred Dillon’s service record (Serv/Reg# unknown) is not open for public access at this time.
Corporal William Hutt’s service record (Serv/Reg# B93303) is not open for public access at this time.
The official history of the R.C.A.M.C., including information about the No. 7 Canadian Light Field Ambulance, is provided online by the Government of Canada’s Directorate of History and Heritage: Official History of the Canadian Medical Services, 1939-1945, Vol 1 Organization and Campaigns (for a general explanation of the structure and deployment of Field and Light Field units, see book-pages 186, 198; No. 7’s deployment to Groningen, pg. 289).
The Canadian Army Newsreels series includes film clips of “Hold Your Hat” – see Newsreel No. 94, just after the eight minute mark (a short description is provided on page 99 of the War Amps guide to the newsreel collection).

Flight Lieutenant Lawrence John Drewry was born in Whonnock, British Columbia, on December 21, 1916.

He enlisted during WWII with the Royal Canadian Air Force, initially training in Brandon, Manitoba, and later at the Royal Air Force Flying College on Darrell’s Island in Bermuda. He spent much of the war serving as a R.C.A.F. officer attached to the R.A.F., Middle East, with the No. 47 & No. 294 Squadrons.

The letters in the collection were written by Drewry to his twin sister Mildred (newly married as Mrs. John Flynn) while she was living first in Ottawa and then back home in Whonock (as it was spelled at that time).

External links:
F/L Drewry (Serv/Reg# J8629) survived the war; his service record is not open to public access at this time.

Staff Sergeant Robert James Duncan served during World War II with the Canadian Postal Corps. Initially stationed in Britain, he was transferred to France in the summer of 1944, and then to Belgium with No. 1 Canadian Postal Tracing Unit in December 1944. In May 1945 he joined the No. 1 Canadian Army Base Post Office, remaining with that unit until his return to Britain in July 1945. Both units established operations in the Belgian village of Lot, southwest of Brussels.

Content notes:
Most collection correspondence was written by Duncan to his wife, and especially to his daughter Patricia Carroll Duncan, back home in Calgary, Alberta. Photos are a mix of personal and military; postcards mainly scenic Britain and France. The newspaper section contains two trench-type newspapers, with one edition of the Maple Leaf, and eight editions of Operation Spartan’s Advance Post (transcriptions of which have been posted in the Special Items Collection created for this rare and distinctive newssheet).

External links:
S/Sgt. Duncan’s service record (Serv/Reg# C97269) is not open to public access through Library and Archives Canada at this time.

Stanley William Evans was born in Calgary, Alberta in April, 1923.  Evans enlisted in Calgary in September, 1941 and served overseas in Britain and Europe before he was demobilized in October, 1945.  The collection consists of more that forty letters and several other items.