Lost bracelet a link to dad’s wartime experience
History Channel and a found bracelet provide a glimpse of a father’s wartime experience
History Channel producers called Jim Whitford in the middle of June, saying they had come across something of value to him and his family that dated back to 1944 and the battlefields of Italy.
By the end of July, Whitford was in Italy with his mother and two sisters, holding a sterling-silver bracelet that had belonged to his father and was lost during the Second World War near the Melfa River in Cassino, Italy.
“I never in my life expected that I would get a phone call like that,” Whitford, who lives half the year in Campbell River, said from his winter home in Yuma, Arizona.
Toronto-based producers of the History Channel program War Junk specialize in tracking the history of items left behind in battle. The show’s host, David O’Keefe, a military historian, initially did not tell Whitford exactly what he had in his possession. But he did confirm it belonged to Whitford’s late father, Frank, an infantryman who had been a member of the Royal Canadian Regiment.
Those details were enough to grab the attention of the Campbell River retiree, who flew to Italy with his mother, Margaret, and two sisters, Sharon Press and Cathy Munroe, for a journey that has become an episode of War Junk.
During the episode, which airs tonight at 9 on the History Channel, Whitford and his family learn what battle was like for soldiers fighting on the Hitler Line, a German defence that ran through central Italy.
After the family landed in Rome, the TV crew drove the Whitfords south via Jeep to cities such as Vallerotonda and Cassino, near the Melfa river — site of one of the biggest Canadian battles in the war, Whitford said.
They were taken to within three metres of the spot where Frank Whitford spent time in a bunker, based on information found in his military service files in Ottawa,
The area, overlooking a bluff, is where Frank Whitford nearly died, the family learns. He had switched positions with one of his fellow soldiers, who — seconds later — was killed by a mortar. Pieces of the shell hit his father in the hip and the shoulder, Whitford said. “If he didn’t have his helmet on, he would have been instantly killed.”
Whitford was taken to a military hospital near the Melfa River to recover. It was there, O’Keefe believes, that the clasp broke and the bracelet — which had the name and war number of Whitford’s father on it — slipped off Whitford’s wrist and fell into the dirt.
It was found 70 years later by an Italian farmer who lives near the river. With help from a metal detector, his property has produced plenty of war-related memorabilia from German and Allied forces over the years, Whitford was told.
“He had helmets, he had ciga- rette lighters. All the stuff he had found was in a little room in his house under glass. He had beautiful stuff in the room.”
The bracelet, which is now being kept at the Port Coquitlam home of Whitford’s sister, is one of the few mementos the family has from their father’s time in the war. Frank Whitford passed away five years ago, taking his war memories with him.
“I would have loved it so much if he could have come back to Italy and got the bracelet himself,” Whitford said with emotion.
His father, a native of Prince Albert, Sask., was 18 when he enlisted. At 19, he was stationed in South Africa, and moved with the Royal Canadian Regiment to Italy in 1944.
An expert gunner, he moved through Italy to France, Germany, Belgium and Holland before fighting stopped in 1945.
“My dad was there on the battlefields, from start to finish,” Whitford said.
A proud veteran, he rarely talked about the war with his children. “The only thing my dad would tell me about the war was that he was sad he lost his friends. He never bragged about any of his accomplishments. He just talked about how sad it was.”
Italy — Battle of Monte Cassino, airs tonight at 9 on War Junk.