The words of a Canadian soldier, penned in 1918 on a piece of fabric from a downed German aircraft, will be on display at The Military Museums in southwest Calgary as part of a new exhibit marking the 100th anniversary of the start of the Great War.
The piece of memorabilia contains an explanation of its origin:
“I got this on the Cambrai front off a German Plane that came down."
And a message for Bernice, the author’s two-year-old daughter:
"Be a good Little Girl and be good to Mama for Dada's Sake."
The letter was donated to the museum by the author’s great grandson Michael Hilton, a University of Calgary student who recently graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Canadian studies and is set to begin his Bachelor of Education.
The letter, written by Edwart Iley, a solder with the Canadian 12th Railroad Division, to his family back home, remained in storage until Hilton located the piece while searching for material for a research project.
“It’s sad how it was cared for,” said Michael Hilton. “It was placed into a big cardboard box with tons of old diaries, family diaries, and old family photographs. The letter itself was inside an old chocolate box.”
“Originally they were stored in my grandfather’s basement. When he died in 1985, my mom gave the box of photographs to my brother who was a student at ACAD (The Alberta College of Art and Design) taking photography, and he stored them in the basement of his house for almost twenty years.”
Uncertain of what he had discovered, Hilton took the letter to one of his professors at the University of Calgary. The professor said the piece likely carried historical value and encouraged Hilton to delve into its origins and research his great grandfather’s service time.
“At first, when I saw the letter, I just assumed that this was a common thing, that many soldiers had sent them home,” said Hilton. “When I took it to my professor, Dr. Lorry Felske, I could tell that he knew it was something of importance but, because I was working on a project, it was up to me to find out the importance of it.”
Hilton discovered his family’s keepsake was one of only three known soldier letters written on fabric from airplane wings, but he suspects many more letters remain undiscovered in storage.
In an effort to preserve the handwritten letter, scribed in pencil, Hilton’s family donated his great grandfather’s note to The Military Museums. The piece will be exhibited as part of the museum’s ‘Wild Rose Overseas: Albertans in the Great War’, an exhibition scheduled to run until December 15, 2014.
“With all the First World War veterans now gone, these stories, unless they’ve been shared with people, they will go into the past with them,” said Hilton. “I never met my great grandfather so this was a way of getting to know who he was as a man.”
