Manuscript Database
Creator/Title
Van Stockum, Ronald Reginald, 1916-. Letters, 1958. 4 items.
Call No.
Mss. C V
Content
Written by Col. Ronald Van Stockum to his mother, Florence, these letters describe his 1958 European travels with his wife Susan while attending the National Defence College of Canada. He describes the people and historic sites of Italy, Yugoslavia, Austria, Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. In a letter dated 15 June 1958 he writes that he encountered a comrade of his late father, Eric Wilfred Haylock (1895-1981), in a pub in Newton, England. Haylock, who served with Reginald Bareham in the 11th Battalion of the Suffolk Regiment, told him that, "only about 70 of the outfit returned" alive. He observes, "We often forget how much more bloody was world war I for the British than the last war." In a letter dated 6 July 1958, he describes a visit to the Verdun battlefield and the military cemetery in France where his father was interred after he was killed in action in the 1916 battle of the Somme.
