Instead of our usual HMCS Aldergrove Tuesday post, we are featuring a military treasure found during this month's museum clean, sort and scan activities. We were beyond thrilled to find these two photographs that had been stored in an unlabelled box in a nondescript manila envelope with "from Joe Breier" written in very small letters near the envelope's flap. In these photos is Harry Patrick Breier, Joe's older brother, who never came home from WW2. We've featured Harry's story in a past Veterans' Month post which you can find by using the search function.
The top photo was taken in Edmonton, where Harry was stationed from 28 July - 11 September 1942. The bottom photo was taken in Regina, where he was stationed from 7 February - 15 May 1943. He headed overseas on the 5th of March 1944, taking part in many flight assignments and proving himself to be a very good navigator.
In January 1945 a bombing raid on Hanau, Germany was undertaken, but at some point during the raid, two bombers collided over Eibach and went down in a fiery explosion. Harry was the navigator on one of those planes. He is commemorated on Panel 27 at Runnymede Memorial, Surrey UK.
#wewillrememberthem #storiesmatter #localhistory #RCAF
