The Wartime Memories Project - The Second War

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210728 F/O Gordon Robert "Gordie" Lauder Royal Air Foirce 419 Squadron from:Montreal, Que. (d.25th May 1944) My father was Flying Officer Gordon Robert Lauder. I was five weeks old when he lost his life in battle and I grew up in a world as a young child where his name was only mentioned in a whisper. It seemed too painful a subject for my family to discuss. My father's only brother was the one to fill in the blanks for me when I was an inquisitive teenager. I was fortunate to know he was one of the finest men to walk this earth. I have read many times the letter my Mother received after my Father learned of my birth. He wanted me and he was delighted that I was a girl. I am one of so many to grow up and now be a senior not ever knowing my real Father. I often think how different it all would have been had my Father returned home. When I was twenty-one my Mother and Step-Father gave me a special gift. I travelled with a group of wonderful people to Holland and witnessed how they were so truly grateful for men like my Father. It was the celebration of twenty years of liberation. It took this experience for the young me to completely understand all that had happened during World War Two. I realized who I was when I knelt before his grave in Tilburg, Holland and cried the first ever tears for my Father and began the journey of grief. I don't have any stories to tell about my Dad and so wish that I did. But he is not completely gone because I have four daughters who grew up proudly telling the story of their Brave Grandfather on Remembrance Day at school. Now it is my Grandchildren taking the medals to school and telling the same story. So Gordon Robert Lauder lives on in our family and will be mentioned and never will his name be a whisper. Natalie Affolter Add to this record.  Related Content: No. 419 (Moose) Squadron Royal Canadian Air Force RAF Middleton St George Can you help us to add to our records? Add a record to our website. The names and stories on this website have been submitted by their relatives and friends. If your relations are not listed please add their names so that others can read about them Did you or your relatives live through the Second World War? Do you have any photos, newspaper clippings, postcards or letters from that period? Have you researched the names on your local or war memorial? Were you or your relative evacuated? Did an air raid affect your area? If so please let us know. Help us to build a database of information on those who served both at home and abroad so that future generations may learn of their sacrifice. Contact us. Celebrate your own Family History Celebrate by honouring members of your family who served in the Secomd World War both in the forces and at home. We love to hear about the soldiers, but also remember the many who served in support roles, nurses, doctors, land army, muntions workers etc. Please use our Family History resources to find out more about your relatives. Then please send in a short article, with a photo if possible, so that they can be remembered on these pages.

The free section of the Wartime Memories Project website is run by volunteers. We have been helping people find out more about their relatives wartime experiences since 1999 by recording and preserving recollections, documents, photographs and small items. The website is paid for out of our own pockets, library subscriptions and from donations made by visitors. The popularity of the site means that it is far exceeding available resources and we currently have a huge backlog of submissions. If you are enjoying the site, please consider making a donation, however small to help with the costs of keeping the site running. Hosted by: The Wartime Memories Project Website is archived for preservation by the British Library Copyright MCMXCIX - MMXXIV - All Rights Reserved We do not permit the use of any content from this website for the training of LLMs or for use in Generative AI, it also may not be scraped for the purpose of creating other websites.