Can you Help?
(Editor – a reader of our website would like some help tracking
down Ernest Miller, RRC).
Here is the message:
Today I ran across your site and found someone listed that we
have lost track of and want to find out what has happened to him:
E30373 Rifleman. Miller, Ernest James. Company D, Platoon 18.
Hometown Jacquet River, N.B.
Upon return to Canada after his POW internment he came to Regina,
Sask. and got a job on the Bogdane farm at Pilot Butte, Sask., which
is just outside of Regina.
He suffered a horrible injury and lost the use of an arm in a
farm accident while he and Shirley Bogdane, age 13, the farmer’s
daughter, were drilling postholes.
The Bogdanes, and especially Shirley, thought the world of Ernie,
and, through an unfortunate happening, Ernie could never be located
after his release after a lengthy stay in a Regina, Sk. hospital,
but, he finally did write to the Bogdanes, and, that is where the
heartbreak of a young girl especially took place.
Shirley always rode her horse into Pilot Butte, to pick up the
mail from the Post Office, and when she saw that letter from Ernie
she can never forget her excitement to this day, she remembers
putting the letter in her back pocket and riding like the wind home,
bursting into the house announcing "a letter from Ernie, a letter
from Ernie" and when she reached for the letter, to her utter
dismay, the letter was gone, lost during her race on horseback to
deliver it.
After much searching along her route the poor girl had to give
up, and, to this day, just about 60 years later, Shirley still
wonders, "what does, or what did Ernie think of them if they didn’t
even answer his letter."
Can you help? I will forward the information to Shirley, she
still lives just outside Regina and is a good friend of mine.
Dick Langen. 467 King St. Regina, Sask. S4R 4H5
Telephone: 306 543-0343
– Author Unknown
I watched the flag pass by one day,
It fluttered in the breeze.
A young soldier saluted it,
And then he stood at ease.
I looked at him in uniform
So young, so tall, so proud,
With hair cut short and eyes alert
He'd stand out in any crowd.
I thought how many men like him
Had fallen through the years.
How many died on foreign soil
How many mothers' tears?
How many pilots' planes shot down?
How many died at sea
How many foxholes were soldiers' graves?
No, freedom isn't free.
I heard the sound of Taps one night,
When everything was still,
I listened to the bugler play
And felt a sudden chill.
I wondered just how many times
That Taps had meant "Amen,"
When a flag had draped a coffin.
Of a brother or a friend.
I thought of all the children,
Of the mothers and the wives,
Of fathers, sons and husbands
With interrupted lives.
I thought about a graveyard
At the bottom of the sea.
Of unmarked graves in cemeteries.
No, freedom isn't free.
Enjoy Your Freedom & God Bless Our Armed Forces.
We are at war although it's far away,
and if we don't fight terror there,
it will be here someday.
If you are a family member of someone that was killed in action,
please remember to update the information on the CANADIAN VIRTUAL
WAR MEMORIAL website. This serves as a lasting memorial to the
person who served his country to the fullest. Here is the link -
http://www.vac-acc.gc.ca/remembers/sub.cfm?source=collections/virtualmem.
"Put your car keys beside your bed at night. If you hear a noise
outside your home or someone trying to get in your home, just press
the panic button for your car. The alarm will be set off, and the
horn will continue to sound until either you turn it off or the car
battery dies.”
