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.

Gerald Dow enlisted on January 11, 1943 and served overseas with the Essex Scottish Regiment. Dow was taken prisoner at Caen, France on July 20, 1944 and remained a prisoner until his liberation by American troops in April 1945. The collection currently consists of eight letters, three telegrams and three postcards.

Reginald Carl Francis Duffy was born in 1920 and enlisted with the RCAF in January, 1941. During the war he flew as a pilot on Wellington bombers and served overseas in Britain, Africa, and Malta. Following the war Duffy returned to Canada and worked as a school teacher and principal in New Brunswick. Duffy died in 1986. The collection consists of his diary which he kept from January to August, 1943.

Louis Dureault was from Wolseley, Saskatchewan. Dureault enlisted in 1943 and served overseas with the South Saskatchewan Regiment, including the D-Day invasion. He was wounded in August, 1944 and remained in various hospitals until he returned home in October, 1945. He died in 2005 at the age of eighty. The collection currently consists of more than seventy letters from 1944 and 1945.

Eric Morgan Finn was born in December 1920, the son of Arthur and Hilda Finn of Toronto,  He enlisted with the RCAF and served in Newfoundland as part of a Liberator crew engaged in anti-submarine activity.  Finn was on his way home for leave on Liberator Harry when it crashed in Quebec on October 20, 1943, killing all twenty four on board.  It remains the worst accident in Canadian military aviation history.  The collection currently consists of one letter written by Finn and two photographs.