Over the course of six years over 44 000 Canadians lost their lives, over 54 000 were injured.  From 1939 to 1945 more than 1.1 million Canadians served in the Army, Navy, Air Force and other various sources across the common wealth. World War II was a long six years full of death.

For this blog post we had to research one of the many Canadian soldiers who lost their lives during the war. Using Canadian archives we had to search for an interesting soldier with many primary documents and discover their story. After hours of searching through many interesting soldiers and learning many stories, I finally decided to do my assignment on William Swift. He had 216 pages of documents. They covered everything, from when he first enlisted to how he died. There was a letter from one of his friends sent to Swift’s mother, and a list rythong that was on him when he died. I looked through all 216 pages, getting a glimpse into his life and thinking about what being over seas must have been like for him.

William Swift was born on May 3rd, 1905 in Vernon BC. Later in his life he moved to Nelson BC, despite the fact that his 4 sisters and 5 brothers were still living in Vernon. He was unemployed when he decided to enlist for the war. This is just a tiny bit of information I found looking through the documents. Below are a few examples of what I used.

Once looking through all of the documents and doing a bit more research into WorldWar II and what life must have been like for William Swift, I wrote a diary entry as if I were him. This forced me to put myself in his position and try to imagine what he was going through. Of course, I can never fully know the extent of what being overseas was like for him. This is just a guess of what may have been going through his head at the time.