In August, a Red Deer man travelled to a war cemetery in Germany to pay his respects to a relative and namesake he would never get to meet.
Vern Halstead was a 21-year-old bomb aimer from Winnipeg when he climbed into a Lancaster bomber for a night mission to Berlin nearly 80 years ago.
He would not return.
Somewhere near Berlin the plane was hit by flak and disintegrated on Jan. 15, 1945. It is believed only two of the seven airmen inside survived. As a bomb aimer, Vern likely would have been in the nose of the bomber behind a Perspex bubble when the plane fell apart around him.
Vernon Harvey Halstead found his final resting place in a war cemetery near Berlin where he lies with nearly 3,600 others, mostly other airmen.
Carved into the headstone is: Flying Officer V.H. Halstead, Air Bomber, Royal Canadian Air Force, 15th January 1945, Age 21. At the bottom are the words: "Greater love hath no man than that he lay down his life for his friends."
Red Deer's Bruce Schollie and son Evan visited Halstead's grave site last summer.
He knew about Vern from his mother, Audrey Schollie, who grew up on a farm near Winnipeg.
When she was a child, Vern, in his early teens, would visit from the "big city" Winnipeg. "She looked up to him and often described him as her favourite cousin."
News of his death shook his family back home. "It was devastating. It was crushing."
Bruce, whose full name is Vernon Bruce Schollie, was named after his mum's treasured relative. It was a connection that only strengthened his resolve to one day pay respects to his namesake.
"It was kind of on my bucket list. But it was also something I wanted to do for myself and also for my mum.
"It was a pretty moving experience," said Bruce. "It kind of brings it all home."
He was able to pinpoint the location of the grave amid thousands of nearly identical headstones online through the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
When he found it, he emailed a photo to his mother, now 93.
"She said it was really moving to see that. She was really surprised. I didn't tell her I was doing that."
Joined at the grave site by his 26-year-old son, who has already outlived Vern by five years, further brought home just how young many of the airmen were who climbed into their bombers to fly into night skies filled with flak and night fighters thousands of kilometres from their homes in Canada.
"It's pretty sad."
Bruce, who has a dedicated family genealogist, plans to visit Wickenby, Lincolnshire, where there is a museum and archives dedicated to 626 Squadron, in which Vern served. The squadron lost 49 of its giant four-engined Lancaster bombers during the war.
Bruce has other relatives who served. His father had an older brother who was badly wounded in Europe in the Second World War and returned home a broken man. He would die at 38.
His mother had two uncles who were lost in the First World War. Two of her brothers served in the Second World War and returned.
"It just goes on and on and on. Every family is probably in the same situation.
"Those people lived through what most of us have never experienced. It was only through my dad and mum's talking about it that made us more conscious of all of that."
He has made sure to share his family's stories with his son and daughter Lauren so that the history and the sacrifices so many made is not lost.
"I feel that a kind of distancing from it could happen so easily unless we make a conscious effort to make a connection."
