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Teddy Bear


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When Canadian Army Medic Lieutenant Lawrence Browning Rogers (pictured) went overseas during WW1, his daughter Aileen (10) and son Howard (7) gave him this teddy bear to keep him safe. 

For two years, Rogers's children wrote to him and the bear often, asking about their adventures together, and he wrote back with stories for them.

Then one day one of their letters was returned with a note written on the outside of it that said:

                      KILLED IN ACTION
                    RETURN TO SENDER

That's how the children found out their father was dead.

On October 30th, 1917, Lieutenant Rogers was killed by an exploding artillery shell while he was tending to wounded soldiers during the Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium. There was not enough left of him to bury.

Rogers's comrades tenderly boxed up the bear and sent it home to his children.

Today the teddy bear is on display in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

 

FB_IMG_1717970905363.thumb.jpg.c10eb73696c3655c71ed36626f6a9528.jpg

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Flying a biplane, how cool is that?!? :FlagAm:

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12 hours ago, Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619 said:

A moving  story, for sure.

 

My grandfather was in the Royal Air Force in the Great War; flew (biplanes of course) as an artillery spotter. He had many interesting stories of that war.

 

When I was young a fair number of the men in my dad's VFW Post were veterans of The Great War.   I wish I had paid more attention to them. 

 

Isn't that the phrase for the ages, "I wish I had paid more attention to what those old men were telling me."

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It's been remarked that WWI was an artillery war, and the first use of aircraft in that war was for artillery spotting. The pilots would observe the accuracy of artillery fire and report by dropping lead-weighted reports written in the air.

 

My granddad, a Canadian, entered the war as an artilleryman, and that path put him into the Royal Flying Corps, which became the RAF in April of 1917, a few months before the war's end. We have his perfectly preserved uniform with RAF wings and a lot of his written material.

 

He said that when he became a pilot and officer, he was required to grow a mustache and carry a swagger stick! On one mission, he lost power at 4,000 feet and glided to a safe landing, though just behind enemy lines. He evaded, getting a whiff of mustard gas on the way.

 

I grew up a few blocks from him and was close to him, often hunting on Saturdays for pheasants in the local Puyallup valley. I own the 12 gauge Sterlingworth side-by-side that he hunted with. I was 29 when he died at 82, while I was the midst of a jury trial. So he lived long enough to see me enter a profession, which he had urged, and to see several great-grandkids, my children.

 

He told a few stories of the War, but I wish I had inquired more deeply and gotten more details. We donated his handling notes for his Clergy engine, which were accepted by the RAF museum in London.

 

A day came when there wasn't a single WWI veteran left in the whole world. That day isn't so far off now for WWII vets....

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5 hours ago, Red Gauntlet , SASS 60619 said:

It's been remarked that WWI was an artillery war, and the first use of aircraft in that war was for artillery spotting. The pilots would observe the accuracy of artillery fire and report by dropping lead-weighted reports written in the air.

 

My granddad, a Canadian, entered the war as an artilleryman, and that path put him into the Royal Flying Corps, which became the RAF in April of 1917, a few months before the war's end. We have his perfectly preserved uniform with RAF wings and a lot of his written material.

 

He said that when he became a pilot and officer, he was required to grow a mustache and carry a swagger stick! On one mission, he lost power at 4,000 feet and glided to a safe landing, though just behind enemy lines. He evaded, getting a whiff of mustard gas on the way.

 

I grew up a few blocks from him and was close to him, often hunting on Saturdays for pheasants in the local Puyallup valley. I own the 12 gauge Sterlingworth side-by-side that he hunted with. I was 29 when he died at 82, while I was the midst of a jury trial. So he lived long enough to see me enter a profession, which he had urged, and to see several great-grandkids, my children.

 

He told a few stories of the War, but I wish I had inquired more deeply and gotten more details. We donated his handling notes for his Clergy engine, which were accepted by the RAF museum in London.

 

A day came when there wasn't a single WWI veteran left in the whole world. That day isn't so far off now for WWII vets....

 

 

Great bit of personal and family history, Red.  Thank you.

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Imagine getting word that a loved one died in that fashion. That’s pretty f#*£ing callous, if you asked me. 
 

 

Edit: forgot a word

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Grandpa was a waggoneer, drove mule teams throughout the war. Took part in some major battles, lost mules to enemy fire.

 

Never said much, walked away from any talk about it.

 

Supply wagons were never empty, going to the front or coming back from it.

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When my aunt died we went to the funeral and then the cemetery and we read on the headstone that my uncle got a bronze star in WW 2. He was still alive and we asked him about his Bronze star. He told us he dragged a soldier to safety who was wounded and in the of the line of fire.
 

He was well into his 70’s and had never talked about it until that moment! Most of those guys never wanted to brag or talk about their time in the war.

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9 hours ago, Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 said:

Those who were there "for real" generally didn't talk about it.

 

 This was highly variable. My grandad talked freely about his WWI experiences, for instance.

 

My four senior partners in the practice of law in my early professional years were all WWII vets. Two were late-war entrants who didn't see combat.

 

But two did. One was a submariner who went on four war patrols with the USS Pogy. One was particulaly fraught, a cruise in minefields in the Sea of Japan. He told me that he'd never been so scared in his life, and had never really been afraid of anything since. He never hesitated to talk about his war experiences. He stayed in the naval reserves and retired a Captain.

 

The other was one of only a handful of survivors of his LST hitting a mine in the Western Pacific. He was on deck and blown clear. He didn't care to talk about it.

 

In the decades immediately after the War, most just wanted to get on with their lives. Besides, why talk about the experiences that so many others also had? As the decades went by, and vets got old, many began to more freely discuss their experiences.

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Well said, Red.  Being raised near Camp Pendleton I was around a LOT of vets of WWII and Korea.  Most of the men at the Catholic parish we attended were vets, many of whom were willing to talk about their experiences.  Dad didn't talk much about it, and then mostly about the training and use of artillery.  The closest I remember him talking about anything combat related was when he was on guard on the bridge of the USS Brooklyn and man came on deck at night with a lit cigarette. The OOD told him to shoot the man because he was a danger to all of them, before Dad got his sidearm drawn someone had knocked the guy down a hatchway.  

I envy all of you who got to know your grandparents.  

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16 hours ago, Linn Keller, SASS 27332, BOLD 103 said:

Those who were there "for real" generally didn't talk about it.

 

My Dad was in Korea when the Chinese came across. He rarely spoke too much about it. After he died I found on his Discharge papers he had been awarded the Silver Star.

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