'My Son'
Over the past 24 years I’ve had the privilege of writing the Remembrance Day edition for the Cowichan Valley Citizen. At a calculated guess that would be close to 150 articles—a lot of words.
All of them honouring what I believe is the most important day of the year: Remembrance Day.
I am the first generation of three of my family who didn’t have to serve my country in war. Both my grandfathers were disabled in the First World War, my great uncle Jim killed; my father and my uncles served in the Second World War and, happily, returned safely.
On the short street in Saanich where I spent my childhood every single man of age but one served in the military, the exception having what was termed an essential occupation in a shipyard.
But I’ve had a free ride, my five years in cadets and three in the reserves don’t count.
So, every year, I willingly take up my ‘pen,’ dig into the files I’ve compiled through the years, and do my best to pay adequate tribute to all the men and women who’ve ever served Canada in uniform, in peacetime, in wartime and in peacekeeping missions.
Of all those articles and words, all the research that went into them, one--for me--stands out above all others. If you wonder why its title is so much shorter and uninformative than is my usual wont, you'll understand that no other title will do when you've finished reading 'My Son.'
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'My Son'
May 7, 1945.
Enormous black headlines of the Colonist announced
PEACE IN EUROPE; GERMANY SURRENDERS,
followed, next morning, by
VICTORY WILL BE PROCLAIMED TODAY.
Farther down the same page, in smaller type, was this headline:
Esquimalt sunk off east coast; five officers and 39 ratings missing.
How unutterably ironic that the Canadian minesweeper named for the Royal Canadian Navy's westernmost base had been torpedoed the previous month but wartime censorship had withheld the news until, of all times, V-E Day.
Although she'd served her entire, albeit brief, career entirely in the Atlantic and never visited her namesake on the west coast, many Victorians had followed the Esquimalt's activities with interest and sent parcels to her crew. This distant bond and the fact that several B.C. husbands and sons were lost with her dampened victory celebrations.
Making her loss even harder to bear was the fact that it had occurred not in the north Atlantic or the European war zone, but just outside Halifax Harbour during submarine patrol...
There was a light offshore breeze that spring morning of April 16, 1945, as Lieut. Robert C. MacMillan, DSC, RCNVR unaccountably held her on course at 10 knots rather than zigzagging. When his Asdic (underwater detection gear) failed to detect the lurking U-190, Oberleutnant zur See Hans-Edwin Reith had little difficulty targeting the minesweeper through his periscope.
The acoustic torpedo ripped into Esquimalt's starboard quarter with cataclysmic force at 9:27 a.m., knocking out all power and stopping her dead in the water. With her decks awash, Lieut. Macmillan gave the order to abandon ship.
The minesweeper went down so fast--four minutes after she was hit--that she took her lifeboats with her, leaving just four Carley floats for those who survived of her 65-man company.
There had been no time to send a distress signal. Aircraft passed overhead without spotting them, two sister minesweepers steamed by unknowingly. It was a killing six hours after the Esquimalt sank before HMCS Sarnia chanced by while returning from patrol.
By then, only 26 of Esquimalt's 70 men could be rescued.
A hero of those horrifying hours was 32-year-old Leading Cook Thomas James McIntyre of Victoria. He'd laughed and joked with the shivering, oil-soaked survivors on his raft, keeping their spirits up. "He promised us all T-bones steaks as the boys were getting on," related a shipmate.
"Later he fell off, or just slipped off so someone else would have room on the crowded raft."
He clung to the raft for about half an hour then said goodbye, weaved and winked feebly, and drifted off to his death. He was the second McIntyre brother to be lost in the war.
For a week after torpedoing the Esquimalt, the U-190 was forced to lie submerged as Canadian surface craft attacked with depth charges. Not until April 30th could Reith slip away and head for home.
However, on May 11, three days after the war ended in Europe, he received orders from the German High Command to give up his ship and he surrendered to HMC Ships Victoriavillle and Thorlock which escorted him to the Canadian coast.
Irony of ironies, the U-190 was commissioned into the Royal Canadian Navy as HMCS U-190 and sent on a tour of Quebec and maritime ports. In 1947 she was paid off, stripped of her gear and sunk in Exercise Scuppered--in the same waters that held the remains of HMCS Esquimalt and her 39 men.
* * * * *
Fast-forward 25 years.
I'd just joined a Victoria spelunking club. This particular evening, the meeting was to be held in Leigh's place. He lived with his grandmother in the Hillside area. Several of us arrived at the same time and we removed our shoes and made our way towards the kitchen, where Leigh had spread out maps for us to study.
I was suddenly diverted by Mrs. Knowles who appeared at my side, took me by the arm and gently steered me away from the others, towards the living room. I'd never met her before, I had no idea why she'd singled me out. I still didn't understand when she pointed to the framed portrait of a young seaman on the mantel.
He was handsome, his hand-coloured black and white photo showing reddish hair, the HMCS on his cap tally identifying him as being of the Royal Canadian Navy during the Second World War. I was mystified that Mrs. Knowles would draw me, someone she'd just met moments before, to this picture and, her face aglow with love and pride, quietly announce to me, "My son."
I had to wait until after the meeting to ask Leigh about his grandmother.
He asked me if I remembered having written a feature story for the Colonist on the 20th anniversary of HMCS Esquimalt's sinking. I did, vaguely. In those days, I wrote a two-page article weekly for The Islander weekend section of the paper. In the five-odd years since that would be almost 250 2500-word articles and I seldom remembered them in detail--the whole point of my building and keeping an archive, after all.
Leigh asked if I recalled being phoned the Sunday that the Esquimalt piece appeared. The caller, a young man, had explained that his grandmother was reading it but, incredibly, just as it mentioned her son, Petty Officer John Knowles, it carried over to the next page--and that page was missing.
What were the odds that of 60,000 Colonist's published of that particular issue, that particular page would be incomplete?
That the first page would end just as it mentioned the lost petty officer by name?
Leigh told me that I'd delivered a complete copy of the paper, next day, to their home. It seemed such a small deed, I'd completely forgotten.
But not Mrs. Knowles who, again by chance, I met those years later.
When, on an evening that remains indelibly imprinted on my mind, she led me into her front room, pointed to the handsome young seaman in the photo on the mantle, and said, "My son."
The Bangor-class minesweeper HMCS Esquimalt was less than three years old when she was torpedoed with great loss of life in the approaches to Halifax, April 16, 1945. --Department of National Defence
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