by
Collectorww2
My grandmother lived without knowing what had happened to her brother for about 75 years. The last time she saw him was in 1934 when he started working on a ship, I am not sure of the whole story, but I think he wrote letters etc. She knew he must have been on a ship during the war and was just waiting for him to return. In the days of the liberation, the family celebrated and sat up waiting for him to come home, they waited for many many days and months, but after a while they had to realize he was not coming.
After many years of not knowing what happened, my grandmother wrote a letter to the red cross asking for information, she was told that he had been killed, nothing more.
I had heard a bit about it when I grew up(I had not gotten the "disease" yet then and not much was said), but one day I just randomly thought of it, and decided to find out more about it, I asked my grandmother for information, but she had no information regarding his service or anything else, she only knew that he did not come home from the war.
After a long time of gathering information, I found a book about all the Norwegian casualties during the war, and there he was. KIA in the Norwegian Merchant fleet in 1943, torpedoed by a German U-boat in the middle of the Atlantic. I printed out the information, framed it and gave it to her. She was very happy to finally find out what had happened, nearly 75 years after he had died, she saw his face again in the picture. She said "He always used to have his hair like that, I remember it well". She has hung it on the wall, and even though she has started to get a bit forgetful, she always says to my relatives: "It was very nice of him to give me that picture, I am very very happy for it".
I am trying to get his medals awarded Post mortem, I sent a letter with all the information etc required a little over 1 year ago to the Norwegian Ministry of Defense, but I still haven't got an answer, I tried to call the guy I sent it to yesterday, but his number was not in use and there was no other contact information. I then had to send an email directly to the Ministry of Defense contact-email at about 12 AM yesterday, but I haven't gotten an answer yet, hope I get an answer soon.
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