John Henry Morgan (1918 - 2010)

Born 19 Jan 1918 in London, Middlesex, Ontario, Canada

Ancestors

Husband of Eleanor Jean Justine (Schendel) Morgan — married 10 Sep 1949 in Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada

Died 6 May 2010 at age 92 in City of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada

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Biography

John Morgan served for in World War II
Service started: May 1940
Unit(s): RCAF seconded to RAF and served in RAF 10 Squadron
Service ended: 1945

John Morgan was a Prisoner of War in Germany during World War II.

Birth and Early Life

John Henry Morgan was born at 26 Belgrave Place in London, Ontario on January 19, 1918^[1], the son of Henry Morgan and May Leslie. Sometime before 1921, the family moved to 244 Ridout St. in London^[2]. Although christened “John,” he was known as “Jack” to his friends and family until after he returned home from World War II. He often commented that one could tell his pre-war friends from his post-war friends by what they called him.

Jack started school at Tecumsah Public School in London in 1923, however he missed most of grade 1 with a mastoid infection. Shortly after 1923 the family moved to the corner of Upper Queen St and Highland Road (now Commissioner’s Road). This house, on the southeast corner, was known in the family as “The House on the Hill.” Jack now attended the three-room O’Dell country school on Highland near Wellington about a kilometre away.

Jack’s first job was caddying at the Highland Golf Club about a quarter mile west of the House on the Hill. Jack was not going to get rich caddying as the going rate in the mid-twenties was fifty cents for 18 holes.

In January 1931 the family moved to a duplex at 250 Cheapside St. This move was necessitated as Jack’s father was now unemployed and the family needed extra income from the rental of the ground floor of the house. Jack now attended London Central Collegiate Institute (now London Central Secondary School). In 1934 Jack was picked to be one of “Carr’s Campers.” Carr’s Campers were a group of students selected by English teacher David Carr to spend a month in the Temagami area of northern Ontario camping and canoeing.

In September 1933 Jack became an amateur radio operator with the call sign VE3VR. He was an active “Ham” until 1939, but returned to the hobby in the mid-sixties, first as VE3CYM and then VE3JE, a call sign he was always proud of as the claimed it stood for ‘’’John’’’ and ‘’’Eleanor’’’.

The summer of 1935 saw Jack land his first full time job as a junior clerk at the Huron and Erie Mortgage Company (now Canada Trust) at an annual salary of $400 ($7.68 per week).

The War Years

In September 1939, after Canada declared war on Nazi Germany, Jack and three of his friends, Brad Walker, Worth Chisholm and Pete Ivy volunteered for the RCAF. Jack was ordered to report to the Manning depot on May 27, 1940 and then to Initial Training School (ITS) also in Toronto. After graduation from ITS, Jack was posted to #1 Wireless Training School in Montreal, Quebec from June until October 1940 and then to #1 Bombing School for a month for training as an air gunner.

In February 1941, John was posted to 19 Operational Training Base (OTU) in Kinloss Scotland to begin training on the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley heavy bomber, one of the mainstays of Bomber Command during the early years of the war. Training on the aircraft included cross-country flying both day and night, simulated bombing runs, and other drills designed to simulate as close as possible actual combat conditions in which the air crew would be flying. By the end of April, training was complete, and John was posted to RAF 10 Squadron at Leeming Bar in Yorkshire.

John’s first operational trip was on May 27, 1941 to bomb Cologne. John’s function on that trip was as a tail gunner^[3] John’s last sortie was the night of September 5/6, 1941, when the aircraft was shot down near the Dutch/German border.^[4]. John was captured and remained a prisoner of war for the remainder of the war.

John’s time as a POW was spent in various POW camps throughout the Nazi empire, first at Dulag Luft, the captured air crew interrogation camp near Oberursel and then to his first permanent camp, Stalag VIIIB near Lamsdorf in central Germany. The winter of 1941-42 proved to be a difficult one for John and his fellow “Kregies.” The winter was cold and food was scarce. The daily rations for POWs was a few hundred calories a day, well below the minimum required for good health. Supplemental food was available periodically in the form of Red Cross food parcels or parcels sent from family and friends, but with the German food and transportation systems being overwhelmed by activities on the Russian front that winter, the low priority on POW supplies meant that prisoners remained hungry all the time.

In 1942 John was transferred to a newly opened camp, Stalag Luft III near Sagan in Lower Silesia, now part of Poland. During his time at Luft III John furthered his education by taking exams offered by the University of Oxford and monitored by a Master of the College who was a POW in the camp. John passed the intermediate B.Sc. exams in maths and physics.

In the summer of 1943, John was moved to Stalag Luft VI near Hydekrug in East Prussia, now a part of Lithuania. The camp housed RAF and RCAF non-commissioned officers and had been repurposed in June 1943 for air force prisoners.^[5] making John one of the early inmates of the camp.

In the early summer of 1944 the Swiss Red Cross informed the German authorities that John had been promoted to Flying Officer.^[6], resulting in a return to Luft III which was by now, an exclusively officers camp.^[7], arriving at the camp shortly after the “Great Escape” took place.

In January 1945, with the Russian army advancing only a few kilometres away the Kriegies were given a few hours notice to prepare for evacuation to the west. While some were evacuated by rail, John found himself with the majority on what is now known as The Long March, marching west in the dead of winter during one of the worst winters on record in the twentieth century. After a 55 km march over a few days the prisoners arrived at Bad Muskau where they were loaded into railway cattle cars for a two day railway trip to Stalag IIIA at Lukenwalde near Postdam^[7]. John’s remaining time as a POW was spent in this camp which was liberated by the Russian Army on April 22, 1945.^[8]. However, after the liberation, the Russians refused to let the former prisoners leave. After about a week, a number of prisoners, John included decided to set off on their own, despite orders from the camp leaders to remain in the camp until they were repatriated^[9]. These personnel were officially listed as “missing. John and a companion made their way by foot and “borrowed” bicycles to the Mulde River almost 100 miles from the Luckenwalde camp where they crossed over into the American occupied zone.

John was flown first to Brussels, then to England and finally repatriated to Canada and discharged from the RCAF.

Marriage

After returning to London, John resumed working for the Huron & Erie for a year, but, after deciding that financial work was not for him he enrolled at the University of Western Ontario in London, graduating in 1950 with a honours B.Sc. in Maths &Physics. In 1947, while at UWO, john met his future wife Eleanor Schendel whom he married in 1949.

Post Graduation

After graduation in 1950 John accepted a position with the Department of National Defense (DND) in Ottawa, Ontario. John and Eleanor purchased their first house at 176 Sanford Ave.

John's initial work was with the Defense Research Board in DND and involved operational research, a subject that he quickly became quite interested in. His work involved closely examining various military systems and designing improved and more efficient procedures for accomplishing the same task.

In 1956, John was posted to France to the NATO headquarters at Fontainbleau. John and his wife Eleanor and son John moved to France and lived in a rented mansion known as "Belle Rive" on avenue du Gen de Gaulle near Rue de la Cave overlooking the Seine river. John's work here was classified, but had something to do with intelligence operations against the Soviet bloc.

However the family returned early from the posting in 1958, due mainly to John working himself out of a job. Once returned to Ottawa, Ontario, he and his wife purchased a new house at 1172 Castle Hill Crescent. Prior to their trip to France, Eleanor's father had purchased an old lumber camp on "Mud Lake" north of Buckingham, Quebec near Lac la Blanche. John had done some work on this camp to turn it into a cottage prior to their leaving for France. Upon their return John continued this work to turn the old shack into a comfortable, albeit somewhat primitive cottage. After their return Eleanor's father gifted the cottage to his daughter's family. John was an avid fisherman and spent most summer weekends at the cottage, either working on the renovations, or out in the boat fishing.

Having returned to DND headquarters in Ottawa, John's work began to turn to the early implementation of computers within the defense department. The first use of these computers by the Canadian military was for the calculation of artillery trajectories. John and his small department (Computation and Analysis Branch within the Defence research Board) became responsible for the drawing up specifications for and implementation of computers within DND. This work became his career for the remainder of his time with DND. John became the "go-to" guy if a computer was required within the defence department.^[10]

John also got involved in recruiting, spending a few weeks each spring helping to select and recruit new DND civil servants from the graduating classes of universities across Canada. He also became involved in various committees and associations involved with computers including advisory committees on IT curriculum and hardware at the University of Toronto. John had a least one trip a year to out-of-country destinations involving conferences with other IT specialists within the NATO community.

A few years after returning from France, John and Eleanor, having been unsuccessful at producing a sibling for John Jr., decided to adopt a son. Gerry D. Middleton joined the Morgan family around 1962.

The Gentleman Farmer

The following year the family decided to move to the country and purchased an 80 acre farm about a mile west of Richmond, Ontario on the Franktown Road, then known as the 4th line. John spent the next ten years renovating the house at the rate of one room each winter and working on the fencing during the summer. The year after moving to the country, John and Eleanor decided to sell the cottage (over John Jr's strenuous objections) to help finance the renovation of the farm house. The rational was that the cottage was no longer being used as John was spending most summer weekends working outside on the farm property.

The family continued to live on the farm until shortly before John's retirement. John Junior left home for university in 1971, returning only in the summers. Gerry, after a couple of summers spent being a hippy in Vancouver, British Columbia, had left a couple of years earlier to try his hand at being a full-time musician.

Since moving to Ottawa, John had always had a desire to have a home along the St Lawrence river so that he could spend his time watching the boats go by. The family used to take Sunday drives in the summer to the river and John would point out the places where he would like to live. With retirement being imminent, John and Eleanor decided to make this dream become a reality. In 1973, while John Jr. was in Europe, construction began on a house on Lakeshore Drive between Morrisburg and Iroquois, Ontario. The farm house was listed, and to their surprise sold quickly at a good price. By the fall of 1973 the family had taken up temporary residence in downtown Ottawa while the Morrisburg house was completed. The official move in took place in the late fall of 1973 with John commuting to Ottawa for work.

John's department had been dissolved the year before, and since he was due to retire shortly, the federal government essentially put him in a holding pattern. He went in about three days a week and spent much of his time taking the French courses offered by the government to civil servants who were required to be bilingual. Of course this was not required of John, but he had little else to do to keep him occupied until retirement which took place on December 31, 1974.

Retirement

Retirement found John taking up his hobbies of gardening, woodworking, wood carving and amateur radio. He and Eleanor spent their winters in Florida as two of the many "snowbirds" retirees. John claimed it was time to go when he needed a parka outside and that it was time to come home when the neighbour called and informed him that the grass wanted cutting.

John and Eleanor also spent a number of summers travelling around North America with their trailer. Various journeys took them to both the east and west coasts of Canada and the United States, as well as all across the US south. They also had time to take a couple of cruises and spend a winter in a friend's empty house in Victoria, British Columbia.

Tragedy struck in the early 1990s when John developed a neuropathy that caused the loss of feeling and movement in his arms and legs. Surgery cleared the obstruction and returned to him some use of his arms and legs, however he could no longer walk without a walker, and the fine motor skill he required for wood working and carving were gone. This effectively ended not only his participation in two of his hobbies, but also Eleanor's and his nomad careers.

John and Eleanor decided to move into Ottawa to be closer to help should circumstances require. They were both soon to loose their driver's licenses and country living was not a good idea for a couple with no transportation. They first moved to an apartment in Ottawa's West End, but after couple of years they moved into an assisted living senior's residence in Nepean, Ontario as John' physical and mental condition continued to deteriorate. John had been diagnosed with vascular dementia, probably caused in part by illnesses he had suffered in POW camp many years before.

After John's wife, Eleanor died in 2006 his mental condition due to the dementia deteriorated at an increased rate. The following year, he could no longer remain in the assisted living facility and moved to the Perley and Rideau Veterans Health Centre in Ottawa where he spend the remainder of his life.

Death

John died on May 6, 2010 in the Perley Home in Ottawa, Ontario^[1] of severe vascular dementia, Although an Anglican all his life, he is buried by his beloved St Lawrence River in the Iroquois Presbyterian cemetery, Iroquois, Ontario^[11].

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} On line obituary at http://www.legacy.com/obituaries/ottawacitizen/obituary.aspx?n=john-morgan&pid=142566772
2. ↑ 1921 Census of Canada. Library and Archives Canada, Ottawa ON. Entry for Jack Henry Morgan in the District of London (101), Sub-District of Ward 1 (7), Polling Division no. 9, Page: 23, Family: 298, Line: 44. Reference: RG31, Statistics Canada, Item Number: 2391294 accessed November 18, 2017.
3. ↑ ’’Flight log for Sgt. John H. Morgan,’’ original official flight log kept by J.H. Morgan, now in possession of son John Morgan.
4. ↑ Aircrew Remembered, (www.aircrewremembered.com), database entry for aircraft Z6942 lost September 6, 1941 accessed 2017-11-19
5. ↑ Wikipedia Stalag Luft VI on line article accessed 201711-19
6. ↑ Find My Past (findmypast.co,uk), Stalag 357 rolls Jan 1944-Mar 1945, citing ‘’Prisoners of War 1715-1945’’. Archive Reference: AIR 40/276. The National Archives, Kew, Surray.
7. ↑ ^{7.0 7.1} Wikipedia (wikipedia.org), Stalag Luft III accessed 2017-11-19
8. ↑ Wikipedia (Wikipedia.org), Stalag IIIA accessed 2017-11-19
9. ↑ Find My Past (findmypast.co.uk) Nominal Role of Absentees, citing ‘’Stalag IIIA, Folder No 7’’, AIR 40/1491: Prisoners Of War 1715-1945; Archive reference AIR 40/1491; The National Archives; Stalag 3 (A) rolls Jan-June 1945 accessed 2017-11-19
10. ↑ The Computer Revolution in Canada: Building National Technological Competence (History of Computing), Vardalas John N., MIT Press, Cambridge MA, London, England, (2001), Pages 162-63, see footnotes 76 and 78.
11. ↑ Find A Grave: Memorial #194166054, Find A Grave, database and images (https://www.findagrave.com : accessed 03 February 2019), memorial page for John Henry Morgan (19 Jan 1918–6 May 2010), citing Iroquois Presbyterian Cemetery, Iroquois, Stormont, Dundas and Glengarry United Counties, Ontario, Canada ; Maintained by On3man (contributor 48484309).

• Much of this profile is abridged from an unpublished manuscript by John H. Morgan entitled "My Story." The original is in the possession of his son John.