Flight Sergeant Donald Frederick Page

Thanks to family archive, discovered in a trunk belonging to my late maternal grandmother after my mother died, I’ve been able to do a number of these Remembrance Day posts over the years [my great grandfather JJ Swain’s WWI postcards home; undated army photos from the Swain/Page archive; WWI-era letter home from Elmer Cassady to her sister, my great-grandmother Caroline Cassady Swain], all of which have focused to-date on my mother’s maternal grandparents and their family (the McLennans were all farmers), but this is the first I’ve been able to do from my mother’s paternal line, her uncle Donald Page, who died when she was only two years old. I don’t know much about Flight Sergeant Donald Frederick Page, brother to my maternal grandfather, George William Page (1910-1972), apart from the fact that he died as part of flight training off the coast of Angle, Pembrokeshire, Wales on November 4, 1942.

Born May 1, 1913 in Cobourg, Ontario (his parents had emigrated from Ramsgate, England in 1907, where the Page family had been producing “Ge:rges” across multiple generations, which continued as well after their arrival in Canada). Donald was the second of four children born to my Ramsgate-born great-grandparents—Freemason, tuba player and World War I Sergeant George Edward John Kibble Page (1886-1960) [see my post on him here] and Annie Fairman Friend (1884-1960)—after my grandfather, George William, and further siblings Frederick Sydney Page (1914-1916), who died of rubella in infancy, and Olive May Page Phillips (1924-2010).

Family lore tells that he was on a plane during training that was flying low across the water, unable to lift up in time, thus crashing into land. Although a web forum I found online did offer this:

407 Squadron History (Procter) lists two losses on 3rd November;

AM646 ('J')
Crashed into hill on low-level bombing practice.
R114748 Sgt L.E.L. Huddlestone, Captain, killed
R90570 Sgt G.G. Belec, Observer, killed
R69485 Sgt D.F. Page, WAG, died of injuries
R85102 Sgt A. Maier, WAG, seriously injured

There really aren’t any stories I’m aware of in the family around him, although my grandmother kept a framed photograph of him (with red poppy, attached to the frame) in her sitting room, and later, her room at the nursing home, for the remainder of her life. According to WikiTree:

Member of RCAF killed in plane crash in Wales, during WWII. Was a gunner-radio operator. Did not marry.

From his attestation papers, he quit high school in 1930 during the worst part of the Great Depression when there was no work in Southern Ontario. He went out west in 1932 and maybe even rode the rails. He worked as a farmhand in Alberta, likely for room & board with little for wages, then came back east in 1936, probably home for awhile. His record shows him in Larder Lake from 1937-39 until he enlisted. Larder is on the namesake lake on Highway 66 half way between Kirkland Lake and the Quebec border going to Rouyn-Noranda. Larder is now just a bedroom community to Kirkland Lake but in his time, there were a number of small gold mines operating. He was a driver for a grocery store and also drove taxi.

During the first round of house-cleaning Christine, my sister and I did of the homestead, after our father died a few months back [see my obituary of him here], we found some boxes left over from our grandmother’s house that included numerous items, including these wings, most likely belonging to Donald. I mean, who else? My grandparents’ fifth child, my uncle Donnie (Donald Roger Page 1942-2015), born barely three weeks before Donald was killed in Wales, was named after his uncle.

Flight Sergeant Donald Frederick Page is buried in Angles, Pembrokeshire, Wales at the St. Mary Churchyard, as the West Wales War Memorial Project website offers:

Donald Frederick Page, Flight Sergeant, R/69485, Royal Canadian Air Force. Donald was the son of George E. Page and Annie F. Page, of Cobourg, Ontario, Canada, and served as a Wireless Operator/ Air Gunner with 407 Squadron, Royal Canadian Air Force. No. 407 Coastal Strike Squadron was formed at Thorney Island on 8 May 1941, first training on the Bristol Blenheim. It was one of seven RCAF units to serve with RAF Coastal Command, and from September 1941 to January 1943, the squadron operated as a strike squadron attacking enemy shipping with the Lockheed Hudson. Donald was one of four men killed when their Lockheed Hudson crashed on 3 November 1942. He is buried at Angle (St. Mary) Churchyard. He was 29 years old.

 

postcards etc home, from the great war

Some family postcards and photos, from the Great War:


Elmer Cassidy to his sister, Mary Caroline Cassidy Swain (my mother's maternal grandmother)

Pte. Joseph Swain (my mother's maternal grandfather) to his daughter Marjorie, also known as "Mamie" (my mother's maternal aunt)

William Swain (one of my great-grandfather's brothers) to Joseph Swain

Pte. Joseph John Swain (my great-grandfather)

Philip Sargent Cassidy (great-grandma Swain's father)

Army photos from the Swain/Page archive

I've been curious about these photos I discovered in my great-grandfather's archive a few years back. Set in a loose sequence, they remain unmarked and unremarked.

Archive, of course, is a very loose term for two ancient tins buried in my maternal grandmother's belongings: tins that included her father's war medals in an envelope, a variety of correspondences from my great-grandfather to his wife during the First World War and other artifacts.

I know my great-grandfather fought in the war, as did at least one, if not two or three, of his wife's brothers (see a similar post from last year, with links to the two years' prior), as well as her father. Are these photos relating to the First World War? Something earlier, perhaps? (The pith helmets make for curious speculations.) No one knows. And anyone who could have already known has long died.

The frustration of family photos on my mother's side: being unable to poke through any until my mother had died, and that, a decade after her own mother had passed. Who might be left to even ask?

[update: the working theory is that this is my maternal great-uncle, Donald Page, during part of his training during WWII; he died during flight training, apparently]

Letter from Elmer E. Cassady to Mary Caroline Cassidy Swain, November 30, 1915

Going through my great-grandparent’s papers, I found a number of letters, postcards and photographs from World War I. My mother’s maternal grandfather, Joseph John “Papa” Swain of Kemptville, Ontario (1888-1976) fought in the war, as did one of his brothers, two of his wife’s brothers, and her father, Phillip Sarvice Cassidy (1863-1930) [the postcard/photograph above is from him]. Originally from Grand Forks, North Dakota, my great grandmother, Mary “Mamie” Caroline Cassidy Swain (1886-1985) was either one of twelve (according to my mother) or fourteen children (according to other sources), most of whom I haven’t been able to name. My list so far has only Allen Leroy Cassidy, Elmer E. Cassady [the bottom postcard/photo is from him], Patrick Cassidy [the postcard/photo below is from him], William Henry “Ruben” Cassidy, Hugh Preston Cassidy, and Bert Cassidy, the last of whom ended up in Texas (I have dates for none of them). My great-grandmother, “Mamie,” received a slew of correspondence from this period, including from her husband, her father, and two of her brothers – Elmer and Pat – most of which exists on the back of postcards specifically made for this purpose, sporting photographs predominantly of the sender(s). This kind of photo archive of soldiers, and sometimes, hospital or campsites, is an intriguing series of photo documents, and something I didn’t know existed. In one series of picture-postcards, Joe was able to send his wife and two young daughters images of where he had been in hospital convalescing after being hit by mustard gas.

The Swain archive, nestled in two tins, is a mess of letters, postcards, medals, broken pocketwatches and other paraphernalia I have yet to fully map. What do all these medals mean? Where did all of her siblings disappear to?

My mother long said that her grandmother’s family was Pennsylvania Dutch, and most of what I’ve found calls them “Cassidy,” yet Elmer writes his last name, repeatedly, as “Cassady.” Is this a variant, perhaps, or a preference? Did a change occur in the spelling? I have yet to fully understand it, yet to even figure out the entire list of her siblings, and where everyone might have ended up.

Elmer E. Cassady

Reg. No. 106129

4^th Troop Of. Squadron

First Canadian Mounted Rifles

2^nd Division

Canadian Expeditionary Force

France

November 30, 1915

Dear Sister,

I received your two letters the same time I got Mother’s, they were very welcome, it was very kind of you to write to me as I never wrote to you for a good many years, well Mamie we are up against the real thing over hear [sic], and we have got a lot to contend with the wet and the cold weather, we do not get much snow up in this part of the country, it is mostly rain, we are in the reserve trenches hear [sic] to-day, quite a little way from the German’s front line, but will be going up in the front line of trenches in a day or so, where we will only be 2 or 3 hundred yards from the Germans, this is some war (believe me) poor old Belgium is purty well shot up, towns blown down to the ground, and farm buildings also, oh, it is in an awful ruins, but they will have to pay for this some day, if we have got to fight to the last man, there is lots of them think that the war is about to come to an end, but it is very hard to say, as the Germans are under the impression they will win out yet, well Dear Sister as I haven’t got much time this time or much to write I will have to come to a close, you can tell Margie that I haven't got time to write to her this time but will write later, so give my very best Regards and kinest to all remember me to Joe, and all the old friends around Kemptville, so I will say good by for this time, with my best love and wishes to all, From your so kind and true, Elmer E. Cassady XXXXXX