Emotions come quickly to David Alfred Hebblethwaite. It’s the words that sometimes take a little longer.
The 79-year-old Chatham resident shuffled into the office of The Chatham Voice during a busy production day recently, carrying a plastic bag with papers and a photo inside.
He pulled out a 1940’s era framed photo of a soldier and, with watery eyes, looked up and said, “I had to know.”
David was carrying a duplicate of a photo of an “unknown soldier” The Voice had published the week prior. Voice reader Dan Kelly found the photo in his family home on Murray Street where it had sat in the attic for decades.
Dan was trying to return it to the subject’s family but had no luck with the Gathering Our Heroes project or the Royal Canadian Legion in identifying the soldier and so turned to the newspaper for help.
David, an avid reader of The Voice, said he came across the photo while reading the paper.
“I had to double look and take that picture over to my stand where I have my uncle’s picture. I did it three times. I couldn’t believe it; somebody found a duplicate of my uncle. I couldn’t wait, I just had to come to the office and find out.”
The image was of David’s namesake, David Alfred Hebblethwaite, a Chathamite who was killed in action April 4, 1945. Two years later, David was born and grew up knowing he was named after his late uncle.
Shown the photo Dan had given the paper, David looked back and forth at the two, sat down, and began to speak, his voice cracking with emotion.
“I got this picture presented to me by my aunt Irene who lived in Kitchener and passed away at 102,” he said. “She gave it to me way back in the 1960s and no matter where I’ve lived it’s been my number one picture outside of my parents. It’s right next to my TV.”
“On the (November) 11th I don’t go to the cenotaph. I used to watch on TV at the Bradley Centre. On Nov. 11, at 11 a.m. I always stand in front of his picture and I bless him.”
David’s father and his uncles all enlisted. His father was given medical discharge while the uncles served overseas. One was wounded twice in Europe.
David’s namesake uncle is buried in the Groesbeek Canadian War Cemetery, Plot 22, Row D, Grave Seven in the Netherlands with more than 2,000 of his fellow Canadians. David has a photo of the headstone and cemetery taken by a friend who visited Europe.
David’s uncle enlisted in Chatham in 1940 and had been overseas for four years before his death. He wrote home regularly, once sending his grandparents a Nazi flag he had captured near the German border.
In a letter sent home in the spring of 1945, David’s uncle wrote that he had been granted leave but wanted to stay on the front lines with his buddies. Five days after the letter was sent, David was killed in action at age 27.
One month and four days later, the war in Europe was over.
As for the photo, David said he has an idea how and why the duplicate was made.
“My aunt Elsie was a curator of the old museum at the corner of Murray and William Street. They may have had a copy made for some display of soldiers who died in the war, but I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure,” he said.
