Next to last installment, My Grandfather's Journal

Okay, here is the almost final installment :)

In his inquiry into my grandfather’s story, my father came upon a publication, Over the Front and sent them information and excerpts from his father's diary. They published an interesting article about my grandfather’s flying career noting detailed information about types of planes that he flew, etc. With the help of a friend fluent in German, my father located and communicated with the family of the young man who shot down my grandfather’s plane on July 31, 1918 and was able to flesh out the details of the life of the man who ‘met’ my grandfather only in the air.

I am quoting below from Over the Front, (Volume 21, Number 4 Winter 2006). This publication describes itself as “Journal of the League of World War 1 Aviation Historians; Published Quarterly; a non-profit organization established exclusively for literary and educational purposes whose goals include the accumulation, preservation, and publication of this history and traditions of factual data concerning aerial activity of World War 1. (www.overthefront.com)”

So below picks up where my grandfather’s journal ends and is quoted from Over the Front...

“The diary ends here. Gilmour still had almost two months of prison and a transfer to another camp ahead of him before repatriation. The move, rather surprising given that the war was almost over, came when a contingent of Landshut prisoners, all airmen and including our subject, was marched from the camp to a railroad siding and loaded into cattle cars. Never told their destination and under heavy guard they began a lengthy, tedious ride in what they soon realized was the “wrong” direction. They were traveling north, not west, and after stops at Hof, Dresden and Berlin, the locomotive nosed farther east, finally chuffing it’s way into Königsburg, in East Prussia. A transfer from the main line to a spur was followed by a short ride before they arrived at Kamstigal prison camp, located near the town of Pillau, close to the Baltic. They began the trip only a hundred miles from France and were now within reach of the Russian frontier. As they proceeded from Landshut, though there was some heartening evidence that the collapse of the German Empire was imminent. There were pamphleteers and agitators on the streets and the occasional banner denouncing the regime was seen.

Weather was severe at Kamstigal, snow was on the ground, and for several weeks the prisoners were housed in huts incapable of fending off the cold. Finally, in early December they heard that repatriation was getting close. Not long after, Gilmour and his fellow POW’s boarded a passenger ship where they were treated to hot baths, appetizing meals served on white tablecloths and clean, comfortable bunks while the vessel tooled west through the Baltic, emerged from the Skagerak, crossed the North Sea and arrived at Edinburgh on their lucky day, Friday, 13 December, 1918.

Lionel Gilmour relinquished his commission in the RAF on 2 January 1919, caught the first ship to sail in the wanted westerly direction and was back in Canada a few days later. After a prompt discharge from Canadian service, he returned to Moose Jaw to resume his civilian career, eventually opening his own pharmacy (where he was approached by Al Capone to allow a tunnel to be dug from under his store into the US for the purpose of smuggling alcohol~but that’s another story!)

Several years later, Gilmour emigrated to the United States where he and his wife, Dorothy raised their children in Seattle and he continued working in his profession. He was not an active pilot after his WW1 service ended, but when Britain again found itself at war in 1939, he applied for duty in the RCAF. Turned down as overage, he took U.S. citizenship and found his patriotic outlet by serving during WWll in the U.S. Coast Guard Reserve. Lionel Cherry Gilmour died on 2 December, 1973, at age 81.

I will follow tomorrow with the information gleaned from chatting with dad about his following my grandfather’s trail…

Thank you all so very much for your extremely kind comment and sustaining interest in this story! It’s been great fun to share and you have been an exceptionally kind audience! xx